|
By Elinor Mills
edition.cnn.com
May 24, 2010 -- Updated 1211 GMT (2011 HKT)
(CNET) -- Google began offering an encrypted option for Web searchers on Friday and
said it planned to roll it out for all of its services eventually.
People who want to use the more secure search option can type
"https://www.google.com" into their browser, scrambling the connection so the words
and phrases they search on, and the results that Google displays, will be protected
from interception.
The beta service of the secure Web search option begins in the United States on
Friday and will be rolled out over the next few days to users around the world, said
Murali Viswanathan, a Google search product manager.
Friday's announcement makes Google the first major search engine to offer this
privacy-protective feature. AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft currently do not.
"Some users will want the extra privacy and security this feature will offer,"
Viswanathan said in an interview with CNET. "But it's not going to be the default
option, at this point. There's a lot of work to be done before we get there."
The encryption protects only data in transit between an individual's browser and the
Google search server. When people click on a search result and are directed to
another Web site, they leave the encrypted channel.
Offering encrypted connections to Google.com means that users in China and other
regimes that engage in significant surveillance will -- assuming the connection is
not blocked in the first place -- be able to conduct searches without governments
knowing the search terms.
The protected Web search service will feature a customized logo that includes an
icon of a lock and "SSL" which stands for Secure Sockets Layer, the technology used
to encrypt the information as it travels between an individual's computer and the
Google search server.
The SSL technology is typically used on banking and e-commerce Web sites. Google has
always offered Gmail users the ability to use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol
Secure), which uses SSL, in the browser. The company enabled Gmail users to set it
as a persistent preference in mid-2008 and offered it as an option for Google Docs,
as well. It became the default for Gmail in January.
People who choose the secure option on Google will only be able to get encryption
for Web searches and not for other types of searches, such as Image Search and Maps,
at least for now. As a result, links for those searches will not appear on the side
or top of the search page when someone is in the secure search mode.
The secure Web search option will slow down the initial connection a computer makes
to the Google server, but it may be hardly noticeable to most people. It also means
Google will have to use more processor power to handle the scrambling and
unscrambling of the SSL connection, which is the biggest reason most Web sites don't
offer it as an option.
The service does not protect data stored on an end user's computer or at the Google
server, and if someone has malware or a keylogger on the computer, Web search data
and other information could be stolen or leaked.
Google announced last week that it would offer encryption for Web search soon, in
the wake of the news that vehicles for capturing Google Maps Street View images had
mistakenly been collecting data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks for years.
But Viswanathan said the timing of the encryption announcement was completely
unrelated and that Google had been working on the Web search encryption offering for
a few months.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/05/24/cnet.google.encrypted/index.html
|
