The Google Talk service is unavailable to many users this  morning, leaving the Gchat-dependent fiending for a fix.

Maybe there’s a bright side?

Google is providing updates on the outage via the Apps Status Dashboard. The latest update was issued at 8:50 a.m. EDT:

Our team is continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 7/26/12 9:50 AM with more information about this problem. Thank you for your patience.

Gchat users feared they might have to kick it old school today:

https://twitter.com/NathanWurtzel/statuses/228482168987451392

Carrier pigeon? Shudder. That’s really old school.

A glimmer of hope on this dark, dark day: the service seems to be back up for some users.

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to get back to frantically refreshing our Gchat.

Update, 9:50 a.m. EDT, via the Apps Status Dashboard:

We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 7/26/12 10:50 AM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.

Update, 11:25 a.m. EDT:

The problem with Google Talk should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.

Does this mean we have to let the carrier pigeons go? We were getting kind of attached.