Google AJAX libraries CDN

I was just looking over the idea of using Google’s CDN.

http://encosia.com/3-reasons-why-you-should-let-google-host-jquery-for-you/#comment-44377
http://code.google.com/apis/libraries/

To use this, you have them generate a key for the domain you’ll be using it with, which requires your Google login. Now this seems to me to open a gaping door to all kinds of logging potential and possible privacy issues. Every time a visitor requests any page with this link on your site, the javascript file is requested with your key. Now Google knows quite a few things about this page request. What domain the request is for and your Google profile, the page requested, as well as who the visitor is (remote_ip, user_agent) and where he came from (referer). While I’m not paranoid, nor am I about to be doing anything I particularly want to hide, and I hope the same is true of my site’s visitors, nevertheless that is something to give me pause, not only the thought of it active on my site but also for any sites I visit that use this feature.

Consider the US government tracking a suspected drug dealer/terrorist/pedophile. They will go after any associates of such people (I once was interviewed for jury duty in a drug case that ended up with the police and prosecution being censured by the judge for entrapment and harassment of the defendant who was actually only an old school friend of a dealer they wanted to get at; an undercover policewoman got the defendant drunk at a bar on Valentine’s day and coaxed him into going to get her some drugs, and once he was arrested and sobered up they offered to drop the charges if he would help them get his friend). Suppose one of these "persons of interest" visits my site. The FBI/CIA/NSA or whoever can subpoena Google for records to prove he visited my site after coming from a paedo porn site, and next thing I know I’m dragged into the business. Paranoid? It’s happening, and has been for some time now.

Another question that crosses my mind is the dependence on Google and their CDN. What happens if Google disappears? You think they’re too big and well-entrenched to go anywhere? Well, so was Enron. And SCO. And Novel. As a developer, you have dozens of sites all dependent on their CDN being up and functioning.

What do you all think of this kind of dependence on large corporate interests who will be able to record every move you make; and not only you but also anyone who has any contact with you?

Hi Susan,

I use CDNs in different ways but in general for static resources.
Google CDN is popular but it’s a bit slow when it comes to the respond-time of the servers. For jQuery I can recommend the jQuery CDN. +1 is that it’s very very fast and not at Google. -1 is that it’s not as popular as Google is, so less users would have it already in their browsers cache.

But why do you want to use load() API? You better should get a real js-loader like yepnopejs, load.js, cjs or sth similar. Then it doesn’t need a API key, too.

hi Susan,

to be honest: I think you’re worrying a bit too much . Google’s CDN works great for me. Very fast. Microsoft also has a CDN, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s much slower. You can, however, check it out at http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary/CDN.ashx.

I agree, why are you using the google loader? The provide paths for all scripts if you scroll down (compressed and uncompressed)

Example:
path: https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js
path(u): https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.js

They even note what prior versions are available, so you can just change the version numbers.