If you're unable to connect with your friends via Google Talk today, don't fret. Your computer's not infected with a bug or anything. It's just that Google Talk is experiencing an outage and Google is already in the process of fixing it.

Google Talk, used by at least 200 million people worldwide, experienced a sudden, unexplained outage on Thursday morning from around early morning and the problem seems to be affecting both Gmail users as well as users of Google apps across the world from the U.S. to India and Korea.

At around 3.40 am PT, Google made the problem public and around 5.50am PT, posted its third update on the app status dashboard, saying its team "is continuing to investigate this issue" and an update will be provided at 6.50 am ET "with more information about this problem." At 6.50am PT, Google said, "We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 7/26/12 7:50 AM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem." The first post was categorized as "service disruption" while the other posts categorized the problem as "service outage." Google said a "majority of users" are experiencing the problem

Incidentally, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are working fine. IMs such as Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger are also working properly.

Many Google Talk users have expressed their frustration on Twitter and various social forums and some even joked that this is the best opportunity to break out from the online chatting habit and make a phone call, or even better, walk over and visit a friend.

Update: Google Talk was finally fixed by the search giant around 8.25am PT. "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," Google said in a post. At 7.50am PT, Google said, the Google Talk service had been restored "for some users." The search giant did not say what had caused the outage.