Route Leak Impacting Cloudflare

As I said, the crux of the problem isn't Google's "blocking", but rather making it intermittent. Obviously it's well within their rights to play whatever games they want - drop every other packet, vary the latency based on your IP, duplicate packets, or make it appear some queue occasionally holds your packets for 3 seconds. It's also within their rights to redirect all DNS lookups to an April Fool's page. And to do any of this selectively based on how many different Google services you use.

But that is not what any user expects, and in the end that's all protocols are - expectations. To me, the pushback I've gotten here fits right in with Surveillance Valley's general attitude of shirking responsibility with some fine print disclaimer, knowing full well what the constructive situation is. "I'm just going to go like this [spinning arms], it's not my fault if you walk into me".

If you can't see how people would expect to be able to reliably ping 8.8.8.8, or how intermittently dropping pings causes confusion (as in the original comment above), then I can't help you.

1. It is straightforward to restrict a DNS server so that it only answers specific networks. This doesn't even need to be close to comprehensive to get the message across. Level 3's (née BBN's) intent is to continue to respond to the wider Internet community, regardless of what their ambient PR says. Likely for similar reasons that they run a looking glass.

2. The frequency and magnitude of your scenario makes it a straw man. A more worthwhile example is someone using a business's bathroom without buying anything. Yet most places don't really care as in the end it balances out, and we're all humans that have needs that can't be fully met by commercial provisions. The major concern is people who mess up the bathroom, paying or not.

3. While a common touchstone, theft does not apply has nothing has been taken. Perhaps unjust enrichment. But given that anybody using 4.2.2.2 to answer production DNS queries is actually harming themselves with additional latency more than anything "taken" from Level3, that's a stretch too.

Have we really become so full of corporate bullshit that we're stuck analyzing things in its myopic paradigm? I thought this was Hacker News?

PS I notice 77.77.77.77 also responds to pings and DNS queries. Should I expect to get a bill for their services? Because I'd much rather just relish the feeling of a fleeting shared purpose with someone halfway around the world in a vastly different culture.