anyone know the history behind this IP redirect to groups ?

www.deja.com.

Yep.

In the decades long before Google Groups there was (and still is!) Usenet. A site called DejaNews (www.deja.com) kept a searchable archive of all the Usenet messages. Google bought Deja and from that came Google Groups.

oh yeah..my brain kinda slipped on tis round!

thks Reto!!

From what I remember, this was their first acqusition and that had launched Google to be viewed favorably among geeks.

and right now, groups.google.com has been giving me 502 for several hours.

It was for me to ZZ but its back now.