Google says 75% of web requests to its non-YouTube sites are now encrypted, up from about 50% two years ago
Google is giving itself an encryption report card — Today, Google added a new section to its transparency report, giving users a running tally of how many Google requests use HTTPS encryption.
Context & Ripple Effects
This report card is the latest step in a campaign Google has been running for two years: after the Chrome security team floated marking all HTTP pages as 'non-secure' in late 2014, Google pledged in April 2015 that the vast majority of ads on its platforms would be encrypted by June 30. The new transparency-report section turns that push into a public, running metric.
The number itself — 75% of requests to non-YouTube properties, up from about 50% two years ago — matters because it gives the broader web a benchmark: a year later the EFF found half of all web traffic was encrypted, making Google's own properties a leading indicator of where the rest of the internet is headed.
First-order effects
- Site operators who still serve content over plain HTTP now have a quantified, published gap to close against Google's own properties, with the implied threat that Chrome will label their pages insecure.
- Users gain a standing public measure of how much of their traffic to Google services is protected from interception, raising the accountability bar for every request Google makes.
Second-order effects
- Rival platforms and trackers get pulled along: once Google encrypts its own traffic and ad delivery, publishers and ad-tech intermediaries serving those pages must support HTTPS or lose placement in Google's ecosystem.
- Certificate authorities and hosting providers see demand shift from optional add-on to default requirement as sites race to match the numbers Google is publishing.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, encryption stops being a differentiator and becomes table stakes enforced by browser UI rather than user choice — the trajectory the later Chrome and Android HTTPS statistics confirm.
- Transparency-report scorecards like this one become a template for how large platforms demonstrate security posture publicly, pressuring peers to publish comparable metrics or explain why they won't.
The trend: The web is moving from optional to default encryption, with Google using a combination of published metrics, ad-platform requirements, and browser labeling to force the transition.