How does that work? My browser is going to send all requests to the same domain to the same place.
You have a sole ip address. All traffix routed to nearest PoP. The PoP makes the call on where and how to route the request.
Lookup google front end (GFE) whitepaper. Or thd google cloud global load balancer
That front end server that lives in the PoP can also inspect the http packets for layer 7 load balancing.
https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/load-balancing-...
They _do_ use anycast and PoPs for the DNS services though. So that's basically how they handle the routing for buckets - but relies entirely on having separate subdomains.
What you're saying is correct for Cloudfront though.
Raw data could flow from a different PoP that's closer to DC.
Aka user->Closest PoP-> backhaul fiber -> dc->user