You'll probably notice that the 404 pages across most Google properties is the same. For example: http://images.google.com/mapss http://images.google.com/mapss

You'll probably notice that the 404 pages across most Google properties is the same. For example: http://images.google.com/mapss http://images.google.com/mapss And you might also notice that no matter what subdomain you hit, the path is all that seems to matter: http://images.google.com/maps http://images.google.com/maps http://maps.google.com/images http://maps.google.com/images It would be logical to conclude that there's some server you're hitting before you get to the service specific backend, and that maybe that is the reason the 404 pages come back faster.