I know this is supposed to be an april's fool joke, but dang, it reminded me of how much I hate this new unlimited TLD crap. I don't really have a good reason, I am just resistant to change I guess.
When the user runs her own root, she can make tld's "disappear" by editing a text file. She can also create new ones.<p>Similarly "ICANN" can "create" tld's by editing a text file.
As we all know, most users choose(?) to use dns caches run by someone else and the admins of those caches point them at ICANN's roots.<p>I would guess most users are not even aware they are making that "choice".<p>In either case, the cost of editing a text file^W^W^W^Wproduction of a tld is next to nothing. (Maintaining a network of globally reachable servers <i>and</i> coercing dns cache admins at ISPs and elsewhere to use these servers is a separate matter.)<p>Yet ICANN can charge exorbitant sums for "creating a new tld", i.e., editing a text file. With relatively little work this strange "not for profit" organization can put most YC startups to shame: 1. Edit text file 2. Profit.<p>How is this possible?<p>Here is my guess: Because most users do not know how to run their own root let alone their own cache.<p>Here is my opinion: It is not difficult. 14 years ago djb made it very simple.<p>Of course, it is April Fools Day. Maybe I am joking and there really is something more to it?
Preempted by elgoog, though: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElgooG" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElgooG</a><p>Although it's down now, so i guess this is the official Google replacement
Reminds me of elgooG[1], which was used to bypass Chinese firewall after Google was banned there.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElgooG" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElgooG</a>
I was really hoping they had a second layer to their prank by having a search for "Java" show java source code with the `import com.google.whatevs` be replaced with `import whatevs.google.com`
<p><pre><code> $ host google.
google has address 127.0.53.53
google mail is handled by 10 your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.google.
$ host your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.google.
your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.google has address 127.0.53.53
your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.google mail is handled by 10 your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.google.
</code></pre>
Interesting.
For all of you feeling that the huge expansion of gTLDs is incautious, wait till you get a load of unicode in DNS: <a href="http://unicode.org/faq/idn.html" rel="nofollow">http://unicode.org/faq/idn.html</a><p>Oh yes, and this is happening in gTLDs now, too.<p>I'm amazed how many places unicode has been jammed in without regard for how utterly unlike ASCII and left-to-right plaintext it is. Check out the vertical text overflowing its boundaries in Youtube comments. Also look at how Youtube's attempts to block keywords from spam are evaded by lookalike characters.<p>I suspect unicode's keepers won't be satisfied unless it can render any monochrome bitmap via a cryptic formatting language the rest of us still naively treat as plaintext in order to slap a "localizable" label on our software.
Weren't all April fools' posts supposed to be placed on the other thread? <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9302010" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9302010</a>
Doesn't work in Safari. It searches for com.google instead. Confirmed with Safari that has Google as search engine and one that has DuckDuckGo as search engine.
In case you're wondering, yes, there are custom TLDs now. They're called gTLDs.<p><a href="http://www.thedomains.com/2012/06/13/google-applies-for-101-new-gtlds-amazon-77-microsoft-11-apple-1/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thedomains.com/2012/06/13/google-applies-for-101-...</a>
Huh - the other domains in *.google are hitting a default page. Perhaps the most-robustly-hosted apache default page in the world?<p><a href="http://foo.google/" rel="nofollow">http://foo.google/</a><p><a href="http://wewjfkenf.google/" rel="nofollow">http://wewjfkenf.google/</a>
The question is: what is "CriOS"?<p>Edit: Ah, it seems to be used in the "Chrome for iOS" user agent string.<p>Weird that it can't handle iframes(?). Or what's the reason for the JS on com.google that redirects only the "CriOS" user agent to www.google.com without framing?
Rest of the .google pages (like a.google) show the nginx start page. Sounds like a last minute idea to host com.google. Even com.google uses an iframe with src google.com?igu=2
Despite having the same google.com cookies, it doesn't show me as logged in. I guess they didn't have time to finish that in their UI reversal/mirroring.