Gmail in the midst of service interruption

If you are a Gmail user today may not be starting smoothly for you. Gmail is having a service disruption right now and according to some reports, the problem is going well beyond simply not being able to log into Gmail.

Some users are reporting that once they are able to log in, they are being greeted by welcome messages as if they are a new user. Some of the people are claiming that the outage has resulted in the loss of emails, chat logs and more.

I haven't backed up my Gmail account in years; luckily, for me I use Outlook to get mail from Gmail so I have offline copies of everything. My personal Gmail account is fine right now so the disruption is apparently not affecting everyone. As of 5am this morning Google says that it is investigating the issue and the next update will come at 7am.