Google News down - world ends, zombies attack

For all we knew, zombies had taken over the Earth. How would we know otherwise? Google News was down.

Thankfully, there are no reports of the undead rising up and conquering the planet. But for nearly two hours this afternoon, we were in the dark. We could only speculate.

That's what happens when the popular news aggregator goes kaput. So, what happened? Who knows.

Starting at about 3:25pm (ET), things got funky. The dreaded "503 Error" started popping up -- you know: Server Error: "The service you requested is not available yet. Please try again in 30 seconds."

If you kept trying every 30 seconds, you destroyed your keyboard. Because it wasn't until about 5:20pm (ET), that everything started working again.

They ain't sayin'

As for what went wrong... we're not going to find out. Bill Belichick might as well be their spokesman.

"We are aware of the issue and working to fix it. We know how important Google News is to our users, and we take issues like this very seriously."

So what went wrong?

"We are aware of the issue and working to fix it. We know how important Google News is to our users, and we take issues like this very seriously."

Oh. OK.

It's Twitter time

What do you do when a popular Google site is down? You Twitter about it.

Not like that Washington Redskins player who is now the most despised man in DC (an amazing achievement seeing that it's the home of Congress).

Some people thought the all news simply stopped...

highfours: I believe it is safe to assume that while Google News was down absolutely nothing occurred in the world.

Others were more devious...

LavanChekala: Yeah Google News is back up......lets bring twitter down with this news

One TV station in Sacramento, meanwhile, was concerned about the zombie scenario...

FOX40 NEWS: It's been nearly 40 minutes since FOX40.com learned Google News was down. Has chaos set in yet? Are we all good?

While one person read our thoughts...

llsethj: Wondering if Google News going down will be the top story on Google news - when it comes back up. It wasn't...

Welcome back....

Regardless, this has happened before and will undoubtedly happen again.

Hey, maybe this is all good news. Michael Muchmore at PC Magazine puts it this way: "The future of newspapers may be safe after all. Anyone wishing to read news using that industry's nemesis, Google News, would have been out of luck..."

Ha! That's a good line. But just in case Google is reading this -- we love you, man.... We're glad you're back...