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
While I get the same IP for several countries: 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
Also across continents: www.google.us. 300 IN A 74.125.132.94
www.google.com.br. 300 IN A 74.125.132.94
And: www.google.jp. 300 IN A 74.125.132.94
www.google.hk. 300 IN A 74.125.132.94
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.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/traffic-management seems to work?