Google will use its own DNS servers to resolve queries from computers using Google Public DNS. In its Thursday announcement, Google said that page loading performance would be improved by provisioning and load balancing its servers, and by minimising denial of service attacks.

Google will also experiment with pre-fetching name resolutions to speed page loading, loading translations into its cache before they are asked for, in the expectation that they will be required.

Google Public DNS does not support DNS security extensions(DNSSEC), a protocol that guarantees the integrity of DNS data and prevents cache poisoning — a vulnerability in DNS where attackers can insert misdirection information that hijacks user requests.

Google’s free open resolver is a rival to other open DNS resolvers already available, including Open DNS.

“Google claims that this service is better because it has no ads or redirection,” wrote Ulevitch. “But you have to remember they are also the largest advertising and redirection company on the internet. To think that Google’s DNS service is for the benefit of the internet would be naive.”