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Northeast U.S. complains of Google outages

Caroline McCarthy Former Staff writer, CNET News
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos.
Caroline McCarthy

Numerous complaints have been peppering the blogosphere today: Google and its accompanying services, including Gmail, appear to be experiencing outages. As they say at Fark.com, "EVERYBODY PANIC."

Judging by the response on Technorati when searching for "Google outage," the problem seems to be restricted to the northeastern U.S., with an apparent epicenter in or around Boston. CNET News.com has received reports that New York City and Connecticut residents have additionally had problems accessing Google's sites.

Google has not followed the interesting strategy that MySpace used when it experienced outages this summer. I suppose the company realized that replacing the downed Gmail with a game of Pac-Man would probably just irritate its user base even more.

UPDATE: Google has made a statement concerning the outages, explaining that they have "received reports that a small portion of certain Internet service providers' users are having difficulty accessing Google services" and that they "are currently working with the ISPs to investigate."