In reply to a post by Peterx14:

I *think* that's because the upstream Google DNS servers are resolving requests to Plusnet edge servers.... soooo... I guess that means Plusnet have an arrangement in place with Google that BT don't?

It would seem to add another potential point of failure and bottleneck. The imgur proxy slowness issue has annoyed plenty of people, but Plusnet creating bottlenecks to Google will be many times worse for them and their customers.

And I don't think these proxies/caches are for the customers' benefit, I think it's a cost-saving exercise on behalf of the ISP.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Interesting, thanks. The same query on BT points to Google IP addresses, and I'd prefer it to stay that way.

Not http://barefruit.co.uk/ ?

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Not http://barefruit.co.uk/ ?

Non-existent domains on BT do point to a Barefruit IP address by default, but there is an opt-out.