This question is on a lot of minds since the Heartbleed bug was discovered. Though this bug was an unforeseen blow to the security the the internet, it was only a matter of time before an issue like this occurred. Many major sites on today’s internet use some form of SSL encryption to keep its users passwords and monetary information safe. This article refers to a high ranking Google employee named, Matt Cutts, who believes that this kind of security should be found in all facets of the internet, not just on major sites. If a change like this were in the works it would be a long while before it would be a practical idea for todays internet. Cutts was reported to say that this wide spread encryption was still a controversial issue in Google.
There are people who have disproven the security of HTTPS websites, but many of this people still agree that it is better than nothing. Until something better can be developed it would be much better for HTTPS to be adopted by a larger amount of the internet. Sites that only use HTTP are open to hacking and spying from outside parties. Micah Lee, from The Intercept, is stated to say that HTTPS isn’t just useful for encryption, but also verifying that you are connected to the server you truly believe you’re visiting. It is also important to Downloads. HTTPS verifies that the content you are saving to your computer in legitimate, otherwise it could be harmful malware.
If there are so many advantages to using HTTPS, why hasn’t everyone switched? Well firstly it’s more expensive to buy sites with that security, and it adds up over the yearly payments for the domain. HTTPS also uses more bandwidth when running on servers. With resources growing cheaper with each year that issue will dissolve. These seem to be the main reason this wide adoption of HTTPS hasn’t happened yet. One day the cost will come down and web speeds with increase. Maybe then we’ll see a change.