Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is offering an encrypted version of its search engine at https://www.google.com to let users better protect their privacy. This move closely follows the debacle in which the search giant confessed that it has unintentionally collected private data from Wi-Fi networks, though Google says that it has already started adding SSL encryption to selected products started years ago.

For now, the service only covers the core Google web search product and is offered by the company under its infamous "beta" moniker. The official blog entry gave more details: "To help avoid misunderstanding, when you search using SSL, you won't see links to offerings like Image Search and Maps that, for the most part, don't support SSL at this time."

Google was also careful to emphasize that searching over SSL doesn't actually reduce the data that is actually being sent to or maintained by Google.

Not everyone thinks the change is positive, though. As reported by The Register, Clicky, a web analytics firm announced the death of analytics. The reason is related to how a typical browser will strip out the referral URL when switching from HTTPS to HTTP mode. This effectively means that it will no longer be possible to figure out the search terms that brought a user to your site.

For now, all Google will say is that this issue only applies to users who opt to use the encrypted search offering, and that "We have a lot of feedback about our beta feature that we need to gather and interpret before we make any decisions about how next to proceed."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Ars Technica
- check out this article at The Register
- check out this article at Google Blog 

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