The recently launched Google encrypted search is causing problems for school authorities. Schools are no longer able to block queries for adult content as the secure channel makes it impossible to monitor traffic to Google on school networks and make content blockers ineffective. Apparently students are having a time of their lives.
Google acknowledges the troubles encrypted search is causing educational institutions and businesses, and seeks to remedy this. The proposed solution is to move encrypted search from https://www.google.com to an entirely new hostname.
One option is for schools to use the SafeSearch lock feature, which is designed to help keep adult content out of the search results. But given how many computers some institutions have this is proving impractical in many cases. So to prevent students from bypassing their filters, some schools are blocking encrypted search. However, a side effect of this action is that it also blocks other services hosted at Google’s secure URL, including Google Apps for Education, and many of other services which require authentication to keep information safe.
To address the issue Google is going to move encrypted search to a new hostname so schools can limit access to SSL search without disrupting other Google services. This is expected to be carried out in a few weeks.
For long term, Google is also exploring other options like moving authentication to its own hostname so that we can return encrypted search to https://www.google.com.
Tough luck students.
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