Shortly after Mozilla’s announcement to publicly test DNS over HTTPS (DoH) in September, Google also announced in the Chromium blog its intention to begin testing DoH with Chrome 78. The beta for Chrome 78 will be released on September 19th. DoH should also provide the benefits of HTTPS for DNS queries from the browser.
DNS over HTTPS with Chrome 78
The test initially includes all platforms except Linux and iOS. Google wants to go for the experiment a different way than Mozilla. While the Firefox creators automatically redirect the DNS requests of the participating users to Cloudflare, Google provides six partners and releases DoH only for those users who have registered one of these partners in their operating system as a DNS service. Here then only the method on DoH converted, all other possibly existing attitudes to safety and child and youth protection are maintained.
Six providers at the test
Google is initially working with Cleanbrowsing, Cloudflare, DNS.SB, Google, OpenDNS and Quad9. Anyone who has entered one of these providers as DNS in their operating system automatically participates in the test. If you do not want to, you can disable the test at chrome: // flags / # dns-over-https. Exempted from the test are currently managed Chrome deployments in companies and institutions, which will undergo a separate test that will soon be featured on the Chrome Enterprise Blog.
Google prevents criticism
Google evades with its design of the test for the introduction of DoH, at least in the test phase of criticism, which Mozilla suggests an excessive concentration on a provider. How the practice looks when DoH becomes standard remains to be seen.
