The dominant online search engine Google—maker of the web browser Chrome, which currently commands nearly 70 percent of the global browser market—plans to put a news system in place that would dramatically increase privacy for users of Chrome, as well as for users of distant-second most popular browser Firefox. The new system, according to a report by the tech site Motherboard, could be in place as early as the end of this month.
But the giant telecommunications company Comcast is lobbying hard against the plan—a plan which would encrypt users’ browsing history, creating a real “incognito” browsing mode. Currently, “incognito” browsing in Chrome simply blacks out the browsing history in an individual browser.
That means anyone who snoops through that browser’s history—looking for, say, a record of visited porn sites—won’t be able to find anything. But digital records of the user’s browsing data continue to exist online and can be accessed, viewed, bought and sold by giant telecommunications firms, online marketers, even law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Google’s new system would, in theory, change all that by routing all internet traffic from Chrome browsers—and likely Firefox as well, which has a partnership with Google—through Google’s own, centralized, encrypted DNS servers. That means any record of sites a user visits would be encrypted at the source.
The danger in the new system, according to Comcast lobbyists cited by Motherboard, is that by routing all Chrome and Firefox traffic—almost 80 percent of all online web traffic—through its own central server, Google would fundamentally alter the nature of the internet, which relies on widely distributed networks.
The system, according to a Motherboard summary, gives a single provider—Google—control over the vast bulk of the world’s internet traffic, and the vast amount of data that can be harvested from that traffic.
But David Spencer of the privacy-oriented site VPN Compare, sees Comcast’s motives somewhat more skeptically.
“They make big profits from selling your online data and if Google does go ahead with these plans, they will no longer be able to see it," Spencer wrote. “The result is likely to be a drop in their profit margins so, of course, it is in their interests to try and stop the move.”
Comcast also claims that the new Google privacy system will cause “radical disruption” to the internet and prevent law enforcement from gaining access to crucial data on criminal activities online. But Google may still provide data to law enforcement “upon request” according to Spencer’s analysis.
Google also denies that it plans to monopolize the internet, saying that the new privacy option will simply be one choice for Chrome users.
“Google has no plans to centralize or change people’s DNS providers to Google by default,” the search giant said in a statement. “Any claim that we are trying to become the centralized encrypted DNS provider is inaccurate.”
The new privacy system is also backed by the online rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which sent a letter to Congress saying that the new system would “close up one of the largest privacy gaps remaining on the Internet while furthering the cause of Internet freedom in many parts of the world in dire need of it.”
Photo By Mike Mozart / Wikimedia Commons
