> It did not ping Google - it returned a very good guess of what the 'ping' command would show the user when pinging Google, but did not actually send a ICMP packet and receive a response.

Yes, it did ping Google and it did receive an actual response. My apologies for not phrasing my comment as clearly as I should have. Here are some more details to explain what I did:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34835214