New site for Google’s encrypted search

When Google unveiled the option of encrypted use of its search engine, people were mostly satisfied. But schools and other educational institutions had a problem with this new setup, because encrypted search allowed students to bypass the web content filters set up to limit their online forays.

So Google though about a solution to this problem, and announced the move of the encrypted search engine to https://encrypted.google.com, so that schools can block the encrypted search and students can take advantage of the unencrypted one.

Another reason for this move is that if the schools block access to google.com, it also blocks the use of other services such as Google’s Apps for Education – which many institutions offer for their students and staff.

“We’re working hard to address this issue as quickly as possible and in a few weeks we will move encrypted search to a new hostname – so schools can limit access to SSL search without disrupting other Google services, like Google Apps for Education,” posted Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard on the official blog. “Longer term, we are exploring other options like moving authentication to its own hostname so that we can return encrypted search to https://www.google.com.”