Earlier today, Google users experienced a massive fail whale. Gmail was down, search was slow, Google Reader, YouTube and image search were all sporadic. Even Google Analytics and non-Google sites with AdSense ads were reporting issues. Of course, most of the complaints could be found on Twitter. If you do a search for “Gmail down” or “Google down”, you will still find a storm of chatter.

If you go to Twitscoop, you can get a graph of the serach activity for terms such as “gmail” and “google.” They rose up and peaked about an hour ago, and now are coming back down again. Come to think f it, that graph looks a lot like a whale. I guess it is appropriate that Google would get its own fail whale via Twitter.

For what it’s worth, a Google spokesperson confirms: “We’re aware some users are having trouble accessing some Google services. We’re looking into it, and we’ll update everyone soon.” I find that statement to be amazingly information-free. I guess I’ll just keep searching Twitter until Google gets around to updating everyone.

Update!: From Google: “The issue affecting some Google services has been resolved. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we’ll share more details soon.” Again, thanks, but we know that already, seeing as how Gmail is back up and everything.