Earlier this year, on March the 15th, Google added a new segment to its Transparency Reporting on HTTPS connections. The new reports included additional data that focused on the secure connections between users and Google’s own websites and web services. At the time of launch, Google’s reports were only showing data for Gmail, Maps, Drive, Finance, News and Adsense. At that point it was recorded that 75% of all connections to Google were secure. This however was not including Youtube, which happens to not only be one of the most visited websites that Google own.., but one of the most visited websites in the world. There was definitely room for extreme improvement.
As of today, Google have announced that they now include transparency data for both Youtube and Google Calendar within their report. Furthermore it has been mentioned that 97% of all connections to Youtube are now HTTPS secure. The Calendar sits just below that at 93%. Being the world’s 2nd highest visited website, securing 100% of Youtube connections is obviously not an easy task. However Google have argued that its Global Cache content delivery network is able to handle encrypted connections rather easily. This is a result of the hardware acceleration for AES and the fact that the algorithm that HTTPS protocol is derived from, is now universal.
As TechCrunch Have mentioned; Google have also reported that using HTTPS connections has actually improved the user experience on YouTube:
“You watch YouTube videos on everything from flip phones to smart TVs,” the team writes today. “We A/B tested HTTPS on every device to ensure that users would not be negatively impacted. We found that HTTPS improved quality of experience on most clients: by ensuring content integrity, we virtually eliminated many types of streaming errors.”
Due to the fact that Youtube is used on so many devices extending from Phones to Televisions and now even Cars. Youtube is not yet able to hit 100%. Just like it has done with Gmail however, Google will eventually phase out insecure connections to Youtube until that 100% mark can be met. As Techcrunch have mentioned however, the company does not currently have a timeline for when that will happen, but it is likely to take a little while.
Sources: GoogleBlog, TechCrunch.
Image: Shutterstock.
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