Google has started blocking pirate sites through its DNS servers.

In May 2025, Google blocked access to pirate sites via its public DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 4.4.4.4 for the first time. This was part of an experiment conducted jointly with the Italian telecom regulator AGCOM and the Piracy Shield system. Now, requests from copyright holders to block illegal resources are transmitted not only to Internet providers, but also to Google, which removes the corresponding records from its DNS.

The first to be restricted were sites with illegal broadcasts of the final matches of the Italian football Serie A, which took place from May 23 to 25. AGCOM head Massimiliano Capitanio called this an important step in the fight against piracy, noting that Google responded promptly to the regulator's requests.

Previously, users could bypass ISP blocking by simply changing DNS to third-party ones, such as Google Public DNS, Cloudflare or OpenDNS. Now AGCOM has partially closed this loophole by reaching an agreement with Google. However, it is unknown whether the regulator has managed to reach agreements with other major DNS providers, such as Cloudflare, which has been reluctant to cooperate with the authorities in the past. Recall that in 2014, hundreds of thousands of legal sites, including Google Drive services in Italy, could have been affected by blocking via Piracy Shield.

Massimiliano Capitanio of AGCOM called the May blocking of pirate sites via Google's DNS an "experiment" and said the regulator expects full cooperation with the company. The agency also intends to achieve automatic blocking of illegal content via VPN services within 30 minutes of notification. In addition to DNS blocking, AGCOM proposes banning pirated apps and punishing users who use them.