Mozilla testing default Google search encryption in Firefox

Firefox users should soon have encryption turned on by default when searching for things online via the built-in Google search engine, Mozilla confirmed.

The change has been introduced on Sunday into the Firefox nightly channel, and if the implementation proves effective, it will be added first to the Aurora and Beta release for further testing, then finally to the official stable versions offered to the regular users – English-speaking and not.

It is interesting to note that Firefox will very likely be the first browser to have default SSL for built-in Google searches. So far, Google hasn’t implemented the change into its own Chrome browser, and hasn’t hinted at when that might become a reality.

“We would welcome Firefox giving their users the option to use encrypted search. However, at this time we don’t feel that our encrypted search offers the features and speed that our users expect and so we wouldn’t want it to be the default,” Google security engineer Adam Langley commented on the Bugzilla page dedicated to the issue.

“We are working towards making encrypted search as fast and complete as unencrypted search, but we’re not there yet.”

As a reminder, Google pushed out default-encrypted searches for its signed-in users last October, and has only recently announced the introduction of SSL search to its local domains.

Google is the default search choice in Mozilla’s Firefox browser, so when the definitive change to the browser is rolled out, approximately 25 percent of Internet users will have their search queries and results private and secure.