Yea, it's not all that well named.  IIRC, it's all based on DNS lookups of a known global DNS address.  On error, if the system-configured DNS resolver works when looking it up, we assume the issue is the domain name itself (i.e., you have an Internet connection, local configuration is fine).  We return the same if we can't get the system configuration, but the we can reach GDNS, and it works for the known address (We don't use the one you were actually trying to reach for privacy reasons).

We'd return the same error regardless of what we actually got from the DNS server, as long as it wasn't an actual DNS result, as long we think DNS in general is working.

Thanks for the info.

It also looks like my steps to reproduce are too simplistic -- if I try to load dnssec-failed.org (against a DNSSEC-validating resolver), I get ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED instead.  DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN does seem to consistently come up when I try to load a site affected by today's ongoing Dyn outage, though.

 mmenke@, Could you please provide an update on this issue.

I don't own the DNS code, and this isn't on my radar.