What Is DL.Google.com?
dl.google.com is the domain Google uses for software downloads. So, when you click on a Download button when using the Google Chrome web browser, for instance, your file would be downloaded via dl.google.com often without you even noticing.
Website: https://dl.google.com/
Is DL.Google.com Safe?
I conducted a series of malware tests to find out if dl.google.com is safe and legit. Here are the results:
I installed the Malwarebytes Browser Guard on my Edge browser and was able to browse the site dl.google.com without any issues.
To check this further I ran malware scans with Malwarebytes and Spybot on my computer after browsing the site dl.google.com and they returned no malware detection. I also ran a system-wide scan with Microsoft Defender and no malware was found.
To try to confirm that the site is clean, I also checked the site dl.google.com on the online malware scanner Sucuri and it returned with no issues. You can see the same here: https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/dl.google.com
Sucuri says the site dl.google.com is a low security risk and doesn’t have any malware. Moreover, it says no associated security vendors have blacklisted the site dl.google.com, meaning they don’t consider the domain to be malicious.
Some hardening improvements could be made such as solving the missing security headers listed below:
Missing security header for ClickJacking Protection. Alternatively, you can use Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors ‘none’.
Missing Strict-Transport-Security security header.
Missing Content-Security-Policy directive. We recommend to add the following CSP directives (you can use default-src if all values are the same): script-src, object-src, base-uri, frame-src
Lastly, I ran a malware scan with VirusTotal on the domain dl.google.com and no security vendor has flagged the domain as malicious. You can see the same here: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/domain/dl.google.com
In conclusion, the site dl.google.com doesn’t have malware and the site isn’t blacklisted by any security vendors associated with Sucuri. Moreover, no security vendors associated with VirusTotal have flagged the domain dl.google.com as malicious.