

Ask HN: Why did Google drop www.l.google.com CNAMES for standard A-records? - t0mas88

I noticed Google switched away from CNAME-ing www.google.com and other www.google.tld domains (such as www.google.nl) to www.l.google.com. They now serve standard A-records, which strangely enough seem to be different for the .com domain compared to all others. For example from my location, querying the authoritative nameservers (ns1 to ns4.google.com for all domains I tried):<p><pre><code>  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       173.194.66.103
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       173.194.66.105
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       173.194.66.147
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       173.194.66.104
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       173.194.66.99
  www.google.com.         300     IN      A       173.194.66.106
</code></pre>
While I get the same IP for several countries:<p><pre><code>  www.google.nl.          300     IN      A       74.125.132.94

  www.google.be.          300     IN      A       74.125.132.94

  www.google.de.          300     IN      A       74.125.132.94

  www.google.co.uk.       300     IN      A       74.125.132.94
</code></pre>
Also across continents:<p><pre><code>  www.google.us.          300     IN      A       74.125.132.94

  www.google.com.br.      300     IN      A       74.125.132.94
</code></pre>
And:<p><pre><code>  www.google.jp.          300     IN      A       74.125.132.94

  www.google.hk.          300     IN      A       74.125.132.94
</code></pre>
The single A-record returned for everything but the .com-version does change, but if it changes it changes for all TLDs at the same time and to the same new record. From another location (Germany instead of Netherlands) I observed the same thing, but with the same 3 A-records being returned each time instead of the single record as seen in the Netherlands.<p>Could anybody shed some more light on why they would switch from CNAME to A-records, and why the CNAME in the first place? And maybe in general more information on how their balancing&#x2F;traffic-management seems to work?
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theyrewatching
I thought Google only switched it from A-records to NSA-records...?

~~~
t0mas88
The NSA does that for you when they carry out a MITM:
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/new_nsa_leak_sh.html)

