Finally we Vikings got a local version of Google! Google.no is up and running (after a few looping redirect domain problems the first day…google.com -> google.no -> google.com…).
According to this post at the Google Blog, the reason is that someone in Norway bought the google.no domain and Google took them court. But the Google Blog fails to give the actual reason for this. According to the Google Blog:
<blockquote>As it turns out, our name means “sunglasses” in Norwegian</blockquote>
Which is not correct at all. Google isn’t a word in Norwegian at all. The guy who bought the google.no domain said he “mistaked” the word goggle for google. So he “thought” he was selling sunglasses with the word goggle. Which I really don’t see why you would do considering a pair of goggles is not a pair of sunglasses. But we all know that this guy was in it for the money from Google anyway. Thumbs up for Google taking the company to court and not paying him money for the domain.