Breaking: Gmail Is Down! [UPDATED]

It appears that Google is having issues with their Gmail servers, as this message just greeted me as I tried to load up my mail box:

We're sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won't be able to use your account while these errors last, but don't worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.

Please try accessing your account again in a few minutes.

I'm not alone either, as Jason Calacanis's Flickr page shows, there's quite a lot of folks being affected by this outage.

No official word yet from Google about the outage on their Gmail blog, so for now, this outage remains a mystery.

[UPDATE]:

Gmail is now back up and working as the gods intended, with an apology from Todd Jackson, Gmail's Product Manager:

Many of you had trouble accessing Gmail for a couple of hours this afternoon, and we're really sorry. The issue was caused by a temporary outage in our contacts system that was preventing Gmail from loading properly. Everything should be back to normal by the time you read this.

We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts. We followed all the emails to our support team and user group, we fielded phone calls from Google Apps customers and friends, and we saw the many Twitter posts. (We also heard from plenty of Googlers, who use Gmail for company email.) We never take for granted the commitment we've made to running an email service that you can count on.

We've identified the source of this issue and fixed it. In addition, as with all issues that affect Gmail and our other services, we're conducting a full review of what went wrong and moving quickly to update our internal systems and procedures accordingly. We don't usually post about problems like this on our blog, but we wanted to make an exception in this case since so many people were impacted. In general, though, if you spot a problem with your Gmail account, please visit the Gmail Help Center and user group, where the Gmail Guides are your fastest source of updates.

Again, we're sorry.

*Hugs Google* Thank you for giving me my crack back!