Well, you could of course throw:
216.239.57.107 gmail.google.com
into your hosts file. If you can get to it then it's obviously your dns server you are using that's causing the problem, or the dns server your dns server is using, or the...
I get the same result after adding that line to my hosts file.

And I don't think the Akamai problem is related because I've been having this trouble for a week or so. At first I wasn't able to use the invitation Tom had sent me because of it.
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Tony Fabris