Just to add a couple data points:<p><pre><code> 1) Tons of random indy web crawlers, mail cannons, etc. use Google Public DNS.
2) We actively discourage large machine-based usage of our service.
</code></pre>
Even with some aggressive handling of large machine-based users, we still grow at a crazy clip.<p>Our growth: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/znfu9.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/znfu9.png</a>
Being in the information security world, I have to wonder what percentage of these requests are based in malware? I know at least the latest version of ZeroAccess/Max++/Sirefef (which we managed to get before the AV vendors released definitions for it) uses it quite heavily. That's one of the symptoms we used to diagnose computers from a strictly network-level standpoint. No one on our network should be using Google DNS, so any computers who were making requests to 8.8.8.8 were likely infected (confirmed using other signatures).<p>That amounted to about 100 requests every day per infected computer just from us, and ZeroAccess isn't the only one doing it (and isn't a rare trojan).
For those thinking about changing their DNS servers, you might want to take a look at <a href="http://code.google.com/p/namebench/" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/namebench/</a><p>It benchmarks global (like Google Public DNS and OpenDNS) and regional DNS providers to show which DNS servers would be fastest for you.
For comparison, OpenDNS does ~37bn <a href="http://www.opendns.com/technology/traffic-stats/" rel="nofollow">http://www.opendns.com/technology/traffic-stats/</a>
I just switched to Google DNS. Before I switched I got a 38ms response time when I ping google.com, now I get 285ms? I'm in the UK. Is this why it's slow?
I used to use this but switched off over security concerns (Mainly because I didn't want Google everywhere)<p>I haven't noticed any difference in load times so I guess it didn't do any harm.
I would be interested if statistical data gleaned from DNS makes it's way into any other service areas. DNS would seem like a useful way to rank the popularity of web sites, I am sure there are some interesting enhancements that could be made using that data.
I for one am very thankful for this DNS. Ever since moving to China, 8.8.8.8 has useful for getting around various flaws of the internet experience here. Even with a paid VPN, it's nice to have an always working DNS server.
It seems like Google's DNS servers are always MANY hops away from me, no matter where I am. The ping times range from 8ms to 45ms.<p>How is that faster than using a local DNS server?