Pretty sure I am being affected by this:

From Europe/GER:

; traceroute circonus.com # 2018-11-12 22:19:35 traceroute to circonus-ops.circonus.com (35.201.69.199), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 192.168.2.1 (192.168.2.1) 0.893 ms 0.805 ms 0.535 ms 2 * * * 3 217.237.147.13 (217.237.147.13) 26.224 ms 27.167 ms 47.799 ms 4 80.156.162.149 (80.156.162.149) 55.073 ms 26.105 ms 56.213 ms 5 217.239.46.18 (217.239.46.18) 59.675 ms 33.253 ms 31.868 ms 6 62.157.249.186 (62.157.249.186) 32.316 ms 45.960 ms 31.911 ms 7 ae-4.r25.frnkge08.de.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.144) 33.013 ms 32.810 ms 34.089 ms 8 ae-10.r02.frnkge04.de.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.40) 32.695 ms 32.853 ms 31.922 ms 9 netvision-1.r02.frnkge04.de.bb.gin.ntt.net (213.198.82.158) 34.075 ms 32.365 ms 32.759 ms 10 mskn17ra-lo1.transtelecom.net (217.150.55.21) 66.848 ms * 68.924 ms 11 chinatelecom-gw.transtelecom.net (217.150.59.249) 81.996 ms * 79.685 ms 12 * 59.43.183.113 (59.43.183.113) 82.234 ms ...

These are the times when Opera's built-in VPN service comes in real handy.

How can you do this in such a way that the VPN endpoint is not also hijacked?

I selected a virtual location in the "Americs". My colleagues abroad where not affected, so I figured it the routing problem is local to Europe.

Looks like maybe China Telecom(or some other ISP) is advertising Google IP blocks https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/cloud-networking/18...

Possibly related

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18436203

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18436187

Also likely related, "Internet Vulnerability Takes Down Google": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439924