Public DNS Stopped Working for Google Sites

[otaku]

I had 8.8.4.4 listed as primary with 8.8.8.8 as secondary. Since
about 12/24, I've been having tons of trouble accessing mostly Google
sites (Google maps, Gmail, google.com itself, even voice search on my
Google Android handset over wifi). Most sites loaded fine, but the
ones that gave me problems were usually Google-based (with the
exception of dslreports.com, which also didn't want to load).

Tonight I had an epiphany as to what might be causing the problem, so
I switched back to my ISP's DNS servers and all problems are resolved,
google.com loads right up whereas especially tonight it wasn't loading
at all.

This must be a problem with the Google Public DNS service. I'd love
to switch back, but DNS is something that you need better than even
99.999% uptime to make it work. If I am online, the DNS server should
resolve every domain name, no questions asked. Unfortunately, the
Google DNS service now was reminiscent of the mid-90s, back when DNS
servers were always a little iffy. Please fix this!

[Randy]

I've noticed that Google DNS is VERY slow to update. I've made
changes to my servers over the last 48 hours and Google has been slow
to pick them up.

Time warner, Free DNS, and Sprint have all picked them up faster.

[Paul S. R. Chisholm]

When you say you've been having trouble accessing Google sites, do you
mean the sites have been slow to load, or that they've been completely
unable to load?

Where are you? (This can make a difference. I'm using Google Public
DNS at home in New Jersey, and I'm not seeing problems with any of the
sites you mention.)

--PSRC

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[Paul S. R. Chisholm]

Randy, sorry to hear that. What servers did you make DNS changes to?
What does "dig" (if you've got it) or "nslookup -debug" (if you don't
have dig) report for your servers.

Hope this helps. --PSRC

[Paul S. R. Chisholm]

P.S.: Randy, what was the TTL for your hosts before you made the
change? If the old TTL was more than 48 hours, then it's possible
Google Public DNS could still be caching the old response from your
authoritative nameservers.