It’s probably no secret (although it was news to me).
Yep - owned and operated by Google. Googlr is a common typo as the QWERTY keyboard has E and R next to each other. The traffic it received prompted Google to run exactly the same search engine from it.
I have to say, it definitely seems faster too, I’ve not yet checked the A records but I would guess that it is running on different equipment and as it receives far less hits than the main site, it would explain it’s speed.
I’ve changed my homepage for the speed reason - that and because I found it funny. I’m sure it’s as old as the internet but it made me laugh because of how I found it…..yup - Big fingers/small brain, I typo’d it. Enjoy!
Apparently (source):
In English, Googlr is the fifth most commonly used misspelling/mistyping of the word Google. There are a lot of reasons for this and other types of misspelling. Some occur because you are in a hurry and your fingers are faster than your brain, or the other way around 
Omissions as in Googl or Permutations (e.g. transposed gl and lg) of two characters as in Goolge are a typical result of such processes. Other possibilities are related to the exceptional spelling of Google. The reason for the Googlr misspelling could be found very easy if you look at front of yourself. You will see a keyboard with it’s special arrangement of letters. As the letter e is surrounded by letter r and w some key presses miss it’s target and thus produce mistypings like googlr and googlw.
NB: gogle.com & googel.com also do the same and there are probably more.
