Google switches to own Root Certificate Authority “Google Trust Services”

Google is switching to its own Root Certificate Authority for issuing its own TLS/SSL certificates for securing its web traffic via HTTPS, and not rely on intermediaries, as it was so for.

In the past years, Google has used certificates issued by several companies, with the lastly supplied by GlobalSign and GeoTrust.

Currently, Google is operating a subordinate Certificate Authority (Google Internet Authority G2 – GIAG2), which manages and deploys certificates to Google’s infrastructure.

Google is currently in the process of migrating all services and products from GIAG2 certificates to the new Root Certificate Authority, named Google Trust Services (GTS).

The search giant said, the migration to GTS will take time, and users will see mixed certificates from both GIAG2 and GTS until then.

What this means for regular users is that when they’ll click to view a site’s HTTPS security certificate, it will say “Google Trust Services” instead of Google Internet Authority, GeoTrust, GlobalSign, or any other term. This will make it easier to identify authentic Google services.

Likewise, you can read Encrypt and password protect your Gmail message in a click

For Google, GTS means its engineers will have full control over its HTTPS certificates since the time they’re issued to the time they’re revoked.

Situations, when another Certificate Authority issues SSL certificates for Google domains, will stand out immediately.

GTS will provide HTTPS certificates for a broad range of services, such as public websites to API servers, for all Alphabet companies, not just Google.

More technical information, such as Google’s current active root certificates and their https://pki.goog/SHA1 fingerprints are available on the Google Trust Services homepage.

Google Trust Services now operates the following Root Certificates:

	Public Key	Fingerprint (SHA1)	Valid Until
GTS Root R1	RSA 4096, SHA-384	e1:c9:50:e6:ef:22:f8:4c:56:45: 72:8b:92:20:60:d7:d 5:a7:a3:e8	Jun 22, 2036
GTS Root R2	RSA 4096, SHA-384	d2:73:96:2a:2a:5e:39:9f:73:3f: e1:c7:1e:64:3f:03:38:34:fc:4d	Jun 22, 2036
GTS Root R3	ECC 3M, SHA-384	30:d4:24:6f:07:ff:db:91:89:8a: 0b:e9:49:66:11:eb:8c:5e:46:e5	Jun 22, 2036
GTS Root R4	ECC 384, SHA-384	2a:1d:60:27:d9:4a:b1:0a:1c:4d: 91:5c:cd:33:a0:cb:3e:2d:54:cb	Jun 22, 2036
GTS Root R2	RSA 2048, SHA-1	75:e0:ab:b6:13:85:12:27:1c: 04:f8:5f:dd:de:38:e4:b7:24:2e:fe	Dec 15, 2021
GTS Root R4	ECC 256, SHA-256	69:69:56:2e:40:80:f4:24:a1: e7:19:9f:14:ba:f3:ee:58:ab:6a:bb	Jan 19, 2038