Mention this online, and you will get a torrent of people telling you that you must be doing something wrong, and even if it is true Google probably has a good reason that is just beyond our understanding.
I just talked about my experience with Chromecast here a few hours ago in another thread. [1] The Google product forums are way worse.
It is not reasonable that I should have to do packet injection to not let my Chromecast connect to Google's DNS servers, especially if I just want to watch locally streamed videos.
Google has slowly been carving features off of the Chromecast for the last four years. I only use it for local video content, so why must I update when it has burned me in the past?
What really kills me is how we wouldn't let Microsoft or Facebook pull this crap.
Watching Big G's actions over the last few years, I've sometimes wondered if it's laying the groundwork to fork the internet.
People talk about China and Russia's actions balkanizing the internet. But I have a sense that Google could do it, as well, and bring us back to the days when people didn't know the difference between the real internet and America Online.
Smartphone manufacturers can and do have absolute control over the software you run on your device. That was not true in the 90s.
Wonder no more as that is the end goal.
Nothing less than becoming the new Ma Bell can be considered success.
We don't know this.
Would that mean that my internet would no longer have Googly stuff on it? I could get behind that.
This doesn't change that? It's a google streaming device that in order to function at all requires a connection to google's data centers.
Why does it matter if that connection happens via 8.8.8.8 or some other IP resolved by a different DNS server? What is the actual, practical difference of that? It's still connecting to Google in order to provide the singular feature of the device. And if you didn't want that, then don't buy the product? It's not exactly surprising that an internet streaming stick requires connecting to the product's cloud services, is it?
If they hardcoded some other google IP and it wasn't a DNS server at all, would that still bother you to the same degree? Would you still be ranting about a "free and open internet"? If not, then your objections in this case are probably misguided to say the least. Because this is really just an implementation detail of the Cast device connecting to the Cast servers. It doesn't change your privacy. It doesn't change the shape of the internet. It doesn't change anything significant. And if you really, desperately care for some reason you can route 8.8.8.8 wherever you want.
Otherwise by blocking 8.8.8.8 you're breaking the free & open nature of the internet. You've done the thing you're ranting against and censored the internet.
It is in fact strange that a device that facilitates streaming from a variety of servers needs to resolve a particular dns server to function. Its obvious that it should need to resolve SOME dns server to function but not a particular one.
Clearly it can't update if it can't talk to google but why shouldn't it be able to play local content or stream netflix without talking to a particular google IP?
All cast apps & authentication are provided by Google's servers. Once it begins streaming from Netflix then Google isn't involved, but they handle initiation of that connection. Same for local content. And they don't exactly need to hijack DNS to figure out that you're watching Netflix after they launch the Netflix app.
And they know when streaming stops. Hence why it switches back to the slide show screensaver when you leave Netflix stopped for a minute or two.
By controlling the DNS server, user can early point doubleclick.net, google analytic to 0.0.0.0. That might be why google wants to control that in the Chromecast.
It is a continue war between Jedi the Hackers and the Empire. The young Anakin Skywalker - Do no evil Googlers have felt the (share holders) power of Dark Side. The power felt stronger as the G stock price kept going up.
BTW, one can also config a raspberry pi / openwrt device to have subdomain ip of 8.8.8.8 and still resolve the doubleclick.net or all other tracking websites to 0.0.0.0.
May the source be with you.
But you seem to have forgotten this device exclusively runs Google software on it. Why would they be using doubleclick.net on a device with no user input or interaction? Why wouldn't they just build the analytics into the OS?
By replacing parts of the internet that were open with non-open solutions, the intent and the consequence are clear.
But I will say that that bridge has been crossed long ago. 8.8.8.8 has been hardcoded in so many places today that it may as well be a fixture of the internet, like the search thing, like many other properties of Google that are maybe not monopolies but are 80% of one. There is no internet that does not depend on Google (except in certain Firewalled countries). It's already too late.
You might find Google's DNS privacy policy to be of interest: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy
To be clear, I use 8.8.8.8, but I understand the aversion. Google is a data vacuum, and being forced to give them more data than they are entitled to is a valid concern.
Why does it need to depend on Google Cloud at all? Sure, Google connectivity can enhance it, but you don't need Cloud to make a device like this useful.
Same thing with the Title routers, where your local network collapses if the Cloud has a problem.
Which reminds me of:
> Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday called for uncensored Internet access around the world. Among other initiatives, Clinton said the U.S. government will meet next month with network services companies to advance "Internet freedom."... In remarks aimed at the business community, Clinton said companies shouldn't yield to pressure from foreign governments to censor themselves or violate human rights. She urged companies to resist such pressures even if it means losing business in those countries, and argued that a principled stand would be good for business over the long run... Clinton said the State Department will host a meeting in February with network services companies to address the issues around Internet freedom. (from https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/hillary-clinton-says...)
> Increasingly, U.S. companies are making the issue of internet and information freedom a greater consideration in their business decisions. I hope that their competitors and foreign governments will pay close attention to this trend. The most recent situation involving Google has attracted a great deal of interest. And we look to the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions that led Google to make its announcement. And we also look for that investigation and its results to be transparent.
https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/201...
Chris Messina, open web advocate at Google at the time, was present (check his website now http://chrismessina.me/b/13865613/leaving-google).
edit: damn... almost ten years ago.
Let's ignore the fact that every other tech company such as Microsoft and Apple are in China, and the fact that Google already does censor content in most other countries. Let's also ignore all the other things Google does for OSS and the web.
I'm just amazed at all the random places people manage to bring up and force their disagreement about Dragonfly into any discussion around Google.
Pointing out the actions of other companies, the good things Google has done, or the fact that they censor content in most countries doesn't negate that fact. Those are just mediocre argumentative tactics to try and downplay a public relations disaster.
We're not even dealing with the same Google from 9 years ago. Here's some good reading for everyone about how Google went out of it's way to protect Chinese dissidents and refused to comply with the Chinese government. Now they're doing the opposite:
https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...
What does following local laws of one specific country have to do with the open global internet? You do realize that Chinese internet is already behind a firewall, and is not open, right?
> Google went out of it's way to protect Chinese dissidents
And we have absolutely facts about what they were working on with Dragonfly, except leaks from a source which was very clearly biased against the project. For all we know, they were coming up with new tech that allowed them to provide services to Chinese citizen while still protecting them.
That to me makes much more sense as to why they were considering re-entering, than the baseless "they were only doing it for the money" reasoning.
Why are you doing PR for them?
That's simply not Google's choice. The people with guns and tanks in China decide that. Judge Google by what they do the Internet where they have power, with browser tech and HTTP standards and AMP and DNS and YouTube and whatever.
All you've done is framed the situation in a way that makes it seem like Google isn't responsible for it's own actions.
Then Google should have nothing to do with it. Otherwise they are not supportive of 'a free and open internet', but are actively supporting a close, censored and controlled internet.
It's pretty simple.
I don't see why Google wouldn't actually prefer if China didn't have such draconian restrictions. At the very least it would reduce their regulatory compliance work in China drastically.
Granted, in this case if you block Google's DNS servers from routing, Chrome will use your system's name resolution configuration.
I barely use Chrome anymore (just for testing really) but the thought that any domain I wish to go to can be overridden by the browser by default - that's scary.
I mean what if Google doesn't like your website's content. They can block it on their DNS server and 99.999% of Chrome users would think something was wrong with your site.
Thank you, I hate it.
Actually it was just annoying, not funny.
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=432236
(I'm obviously a bit biased on the matter because it affected me and cost me a silly amount of time to track down.)
They also claimed Firefox was doing the same thing, which is false and not really sufficient justification for not supporting things that MUST be supported.
[0] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=700354
This has been discussed to death. Slippery slope, etc., etc.
pass in quick on { $lan $wireguard } proto udp to { 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 } port 53 rdr-to 192.168.2.1
Locally I run Unbound for caching, local dns zones and ad/malware domain blocking[2]. I have a DNS forwarder in Unbound configured to a local Stubby[1] instance that does dns over tls to Cloudflare.
Having done "big data" contract work for the largest telco in my current country of residence who are some of the worst skilled people I have ever work with, your local ISP is highly likely abusing your DNS history profiling your household for various questionable things just as much as Google. At least with Cloudflare they have a clear privacy policy[3] and I have faith their technical skill to anonymize data and use it can't be as bad as my ISP.
[1] https://dnsprivacy.org/wiki/display/DP/DNS+Privacy+Daemon+-+... [2] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts [3] https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/commitment-to-priv...
If people don't push back against these kinds of things, Google will continue to abuse their power. There shouldn't be an army of apologists here making excuses for them.
As far as a solution goes, they can simply make 8.8.8.8 a fallback when something goes wrong. It's a disturbing trend to see them forcing things like this upon users.