Possibly due to the growing security and privacy concerns being faced by Facebook lately, Google was quick to implement measures to avoid similar issues. Google is currently testing a new encrypted interface for its web search. You can test Google’s encrypted web search by simply going to https://www.google.com instead of the usual http://www.google.com.
According to Google, when you search on https://www.google.com, an encrypted and secured channel is created between your browser and Google. This protects your search terms and search results pages from being intercepted by a third party on your network. To differentiate encrypted search with the regular Google web search, you’d notice that encrypted search has a modified logo, the one with a locked icon to signify that you are searching using SSL.
When it comes to search results, Google’s encrypted search is somewhat limited also as it does not cover the usual Google web search products. Image search Maps are not included in encrypted search since they don’t support SSL yet. In addition, search experience on this site might be slower than the regular Google web search since SSL connection require additional time to set up the encryption between the browser and the remote server. Google promises the same search results though.
Another important point to raise here is that Google’s encrypted search still gets and maintains search data. It does not reduce the data sent to Google but just hides those data from third parties who are seeking it.
