Yeah, and I checked a few whois history sites and the domain had been registered with Mark Monitor as the registrar. That's a major mistake on their [MarkMonitor's] part.
Edit: clarified that I meant the error seems to be on MM's side.
Edit: clarified that I meant the error seems to be on MM's side.
So unless Google explicitly told MarkMonitor to release the domain, this seems like MarkMonitor dropped the ball.
$ whois google.com
...
Registrar: MarkMonitor Inc.