When I started to write the title, I almost typed in "Twitter is down," as I'm so used to typing that headline and message (accompanied by a string of expletives) on a fairly regular basis, but it seems that Google has taken a ride on the Fail Whale express today.
The outage for GMail now is global, and appears to have been down by my count since around 4:00 PM CST. As of the moment, all other Google systems appear to be functioning, and it isn't the Accounts system that is failing, just access to GMail proper. I would have contacted Google for comment, but guess where I have saved the number for my buddy at Google?
Given the amount of my digital life that is stored at Google, it's a wake-up call. GMail is typically the most reliable of the email systems I've used over the course of my Internet history - it is full featured, generally always there, and extremely versatile. I can't imagine I am the only person in the blogosphere so heavily vested in Google services, so it'll be interesting to see what effect a couple hours of downtime will have on us all.
UPDATE: 5:33 PM CST - It appears that after little over an hour, GMail is back up for all of us here on staff at Mashable, though one or two people I've polled are still having issues logging back in. Given that GMail doesn't reside on one single server anywhere, it might take a few minutes for the return to functionality to become complete.