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Early 2009. Date lines up with how old the ex-engineer thinks the device might be (3ish years old). So perhaps the Finnish text is explained by this being a piece of Hamina Data Center's original networking gear.

"Ex-Google engineer J.R. Rivers — who now runs a networking outfit called Cumulus Networks — says this appears to be an older switch, something that has been used for about three years or so"

A friend who used to do networking stuff for a global bank had good things to say about Nokia networking gear.

So I guess there are good networking hardware engineers in Finland, and it's not a stretch to imagine Google might have bought some of them up somewhere along the way.

Nokia has been hammered in the past couple of years and has shed[1] and will be shedding more[2] jobs over the next several quarters. Google and other technology companies have probably been circling Finland for a number of months now trying to identify and intake the best talent they can find.

[1]http://www.bgr.com/2012/03/22/nokia-to-cut-1000-jobs-from-fi...

[2]http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/14/nokia-layoffs-2012-vertu-restr...

Indeed. It could also have been manufactured for them by Elcoteq (Finnish EMS company).

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