It's Not You, Google's G-Chat Is Really Down -- Here's The Company's Response

How are people going to work -- or not work -- today with one of the most popular instant messaging services down? Google chat (also known as G-chat or G-talk) is having some technical difficulties this morning.

Twitter has been a flurry with people proclaiming the service is not working and wondering why. One has even said they wondered why they saw a "huge productivity jump today," before they noticed the service was still down.

(Related: Twitter Down: Are All the G-Chatters Crashing Twitter?)

According to Tech2, Google confirmed they are aware of the service suffering an outage. Here's what Google had to say:

"We're aware of a problem with Google Talk affecting a majority of users. The affected users are able to access Google Talk, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior."

Google is expected to provide an update on the service soon. At the time of this posting, it appears that some functionality is slowly beginning to be restored. Stay tuned to this post for updated information.

In the mean time, how are people going to communicate? Will they use the slower version of chat also known as email, stop by each others desks or pick up the phone? Let us know in the comments if you a) see a jump in work productivity while the service is down or b) find yourself communicating the old-fashioned way with colleagues today.

Update: At 8:50 a.m. (EST) Google issued a statement saying its team was continuing to investigate the issue. It is planning another update with more information around 9:50 a.m.  

At 10:50 a.m. Google announced service had been restored to some users. It said full resolution for all users was expected "in the near future."

As of 11:50 a.m. Google announced that service should be restored for all users.