14 DAY TRIAL // Google has made a lot of waves with the announcement that it may pull out of China if it won't be able to run an unfiltered search engine in the country. Part of the decision, though definitely not the sole reason, was a recent attack targeting Gmail, originating from China, on which you can read a more detailed overview in the Security section. Another repercussion of the attack is a bigger emphasis on security at the company as any sign that its cloud services are susceptible to attacks would be a serious blow to its credibility and its business. One of the very first measures it has taken is defaulting to secure https connections for all Gmail users, a feature optional until now.
"Using https helps protect data from being snooped by third parties, such as in public wifi hotspots. We initially left the choice of using it up to you because there's a downside: https can make your mail slower since encrypted data doesn't travel across the web as quickly as unencrypted data. Over the last few months, we've been researching the security/latency tradeoff and decided that turning https on for everyone was the right thing to do," Sam Schillace, Gmail engineering director, wrote on the Gmail blog.
Google doesn't directly link the decision to the recent attacks, but the fact that it made the announcement at the same time it revealed its new China policy is more than just coincidental. All communications with Gmail will now be done using the encrypted https (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) by default for all regular users. For most people, this change should be seamless and should hardly be noticeable.
At worst, it could mean slightly slower communications which could prove problematic for those with slower Internet connections. But Google's usual speedy services should minimize the issue. Offline Gmail users, though, are likely to encounter some issues and Google has released a workaround to enable them to use the offline features over the https connection. In any case, Google is also offering users the option to disable the https connections if they wish to. This can be done by going to the Settings menu in Gmail and de-selecting the "Always use https" option.