Both Langley and another Google employee, Mike Graboski, made comments that suggested Google had no issues with Firefox making the switch. That renewed discussions about making secure search at Google the default for Firefox users.

Since then, Google made a different method of secure searching the default for Google for signed-in users at, Google SSL Search. We are working towards making encrypted search as fast and complete as unencrypted search, but we’re not there yet 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. We would welcome Firefox giving their users the option to use encrypted search.

At that time, Google Chrome engineer Adam Langley said that using a secure version of Google known as Google Encrypted Search wouldn’t work: Back in February 2011, he pushed for secure search to be the default in Firefox. Privacy advocate Christopher Soghoian noted the change on his blog today.

This will include migrating the changes to our non-English version of Firefox, as well,” said Johnathan Nightingale, Director of Firefox Engineering, when I emailed Firefox about the posted change. If no issues are uncovered, it will move through our Aurora and Beta release channels before eventually shipping to all our Firefox users. “We are currently testing the change to use SSL for built-in Google searches in our Firefox nightly channel. A loophole in Google Secure Search continues to provide them with this data. It will also further reduce the ability for publishers to know how people find their sites in Google - except for Google advertisers. The popular Firefox browser is on track to use a secure method of searching Google by default, a change that will help prevent potential “eavesdropping” of what people are searching for.

Firefox search with duckduckgo