14 DAY TRIAL // Google has announced that it is expanding the use of HTTPS across its international search domains. Encrypted connections had only been available on Google.com, but now local domains, Google.co.uk, Google.jp and so on, would get secured searches as well, the feature is rolling out over the next few weeks.
"Several months ago we made a change to our default search experience on google.com — when you’re signed into Google, we add SSL encryption to increase the privacy and security of your web searches," Michael Safyan, software engineer at Google, wrote.
"The change encrypts your search queries and our search results page, which is particularly important when you’re using an open, unsecured Internet connection," he said.
"We’re now ready to expand this protection, so over the next few weeks we will begin introducing SSL search beyond google.com to our local domains around the globe. As before, we hope that these efforts to expand the use of SSL encryption in our services motivate other companies to adopt SSL more broadly," he announced.
It should be noted that HTTPS already works for these domains, but it is not used by default. You have to manually add https:// before the regular search URL or modify the built-in search plugins for your browser to use HTTPS all the time.
After the switch, HTTPS will be the default and used as standard, though unencrypted connections will still be supported. The switch only covers signed-in users.
Last year, Google switched its main search page to an SSL encrypted connection. All Google Searches on Google.com, the main domain, are transported over HTTPS making them harder, close to impossible, for third parties to snoop on them, either someone sharing your open WiFi connection, your government, your ISP beset by media corporations and so on.
There are plenty of benefits to using HTTPS and few drawbacks. Recent improvements to both the server side technology and web browsers cut down on the performance overhead added by using encryption.
At the same time, encrypted connections may not be entirely safe, there have been more and more worrying attacks and lapses in HTTPS security in the past year or so, and they don't protect you from many types of attacks on the web, but they're sure better than regular HTTP connections which offer zero security and privacy.