The DNS is a crucial part of the Internet. It converts the text addresses people can remember into the numeric Internet Protocol addresses actually used to locate information on the Internet.

Google wants to speed up a key part of the Internet's inner workings called the Domain Name System and is inviting technically savvy folks to try their ideas out.

When you visit a Web page, a DNS server that's part of a vast distributed network often must perform that conversion--called resolving a host--many times. With the Google Public DNS service, Google wants to be that server.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10408624-264.html