WebProNews

Last year Google started the "Google Azerbaijan Project", Google was translated into Azerbaijani and www.google.az was used for all local Azerbaijani users.

How it works is when a searcher from Azerbaijani goes to www.google.com, it determines user's location (by IP address) and redirects to www.google.az, which opens Google in Azerbaijani language.

Starting this morning, google.az does not respond. A query of WhoIs.net shows that the domain doesn't exist.

According to bakutoday.net, usually a domain gets deleted if domain owner doesn't pay the domain's support fees for the current year, which caused the domain to be dropped and its DNS records cleared.

Whatever caused this problem; the fact is that no user from Azerbaijan can use the Google's Azerbaijan services. Although, they can still utilize Google search by going to http://www.google.com/search

Jeremy Muncy is a staff writer for WebProNews.com