How to and why you should use Google's New DNS Server

Today, Google announced that anyone can now point to their public DNS servers (with the easy to remember IP addresses of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4), they have fairly complete instructions on how to set up your system or home network to use their DNS servers here. In my case, it was as simple as logging into my router and telling it to use those addresses for DNS, rather than taking the ones supplied by my ISP via DHCP. Since all of the systems in my house point to my router for DNS (the router just passes on the request), that automatically set up my entire house to use Google for DNS.

So why should you do it? Again, Google has some pretty convincing reasons available. One reason would be if you have an obnoxious ISP that redirects all incorrect DNS requests to some ad page. Another is speed, Google is pretty good in that department. One interesting question is if Google is going to farm the DNS requests to create anonimized datasets. If enough folks use them, they should start to get a pretty good picture of what sites are most popular.