Google Chat Goes Down, Everyone Freaks Out

Are you feeling a bit disconnected, lonely even? You aren’t the only one: folks using Google Chat/Google Hangouts — known by its users as Gchat or G-chat — are reporting that the feature appears to be down.

Consumerist noticed it in our virtual offices around 12:20 ET, and started seeing other folks complaining about the lack of chat on Twitter shortly after.

oh god is gchat down, is this the end of the world

— Luis Paez-Pumar (@paezpumarL) November 2, 2016

Is anyone else having problems with Gchat?

— Alyssa Rosenberg (@AlyssaRosenberg) November 2, 2016

when #gchat goes down http://pic.twitter.com/mcyFrwaJwb

— Anjan (@HeyAnjan) November 2, 2016

If #gchat is down, does that mean that I have to actually do work now?

— Courtney Frain (@courtneyfrain) November 2, 2016

this thing where gchat is down is NOT ACCEPTABLE

— doleful moo of a cow (@bnwlfsn) November 2, 2016

is anybody else out there having difficulty connecting to hangouts/gchat servers or is it just me

— Richard Porczak (@tsiro) November 2, 2016

DownDetector.com shows a spike in problems starting around 12:28:

And the outage heat maps shows a bunch of issues concentrated in large metropolitan areas on both coasts as well as in the Midwest:

Everyone hold on, we can make it through this together — and with the help of StrongBad.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist