Several Google services from Hangouts to Gmail Chat went down Monday morning, causing some stress — as well as better productivity — for those that rely on the tools to communicate.
The Google Apps Status Dashboard shows “service disruption” for Hangouts, Google Spreadsheets and Google Talk, all of which have been down for the past hour or so.
The outage is affecting people in interesting ways and seems to be increasing the amount work being done on Monday for some:
Am I the only person whose productivity has skyrocketed since gchat went down
— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) March 17, 2014
Guys in case you were wondering, GChat IS down. In other news Monday productivity has increased 40%.
— DSTRN (@Destron_) March 17, 2014
GChat is down and my productivity soars to unheard of highs.
— becca sayre (@BeccaSayre) March 17, 2014
For others, Google’s hiccup is actually making life difficult at the office:
#Gchat is down. Translation: Productivity is down. #MondayProblems
— Emily Brock (@EmilyNBrock) March 17, 2014
Man, when Google Drive breaks it REALLY cuts into productivity.
— Jason Mical (@BrotherMagneto) March 17, 2014
People are also resorting to face-to-face conversation:
Gchat is down. Let's go back to old-fashioned face-to-face gossiping about coworkers.
— Imran Garda (@ImranGarda) March 17, 2014
Gmail, which went down for several minutes in January, appears to be working just fine.
For people that absolutely need a way to chat online, there’s always the legendary — at least for my fellow 20-somethings — AOL Instant Messenger and its classic sound effects.