Google’s Public DNS service
Since this is a tech blog, there’s a good chance most readers know that their Domain Name System is what compares the typed URL of a website against the IP number of a given website. http://crenk.com, for example translates to 954.236.55.186 on your DNS, which then points your browser to the right place. This checking process has to happen before the page you’ve requested starts downloading, a process that generally takes a fraction of a second.
Google has decided that this fraction of a second is too long for it’s valuable customers to wait, and is now providing its own publicly available DNS. You can change your network settings to point at their service from the one that your ISP uses. Should you bother? Only if your network is making thousands of lookups a minute. For domestic use the 0.01 of a second that switching DNS could save you is largely irrelevant, but if your network is dealing with hundreds of thousands of lookups, as in a big office building or other massive corporate environment, then you could significantly reduce the wait time for your network, which might filter down enough to be appreciable by individual users on your system.
Of course, google will then know every single page that every single user on your system uses, an information gathering facility which is more likely to be their motivation for providing the service than any altruistic time-saving opportunity for users.
