Google Talk knocked offline more than four hours

Google Talk, the US tech giant's messaging and telephony service, was knocked offline today for unknown reasons, but was restored after more than four hours, the company said.

Google Talk, the US tech giant's messaging and telephony service, was knocked offline today for unknown reasons, but was restored after more than four hours, the company said.

A Google status page said the service appeared to be malfunctioning around 1040 GMT, with the outage continuing more than three hours later.

'We're aware of a problem with Google Talk affecting a majority of users,' the status page said.

'The affected users are able to access Google Talk, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior.'

At 1340 GMT, the page said, 'We are continuing to investigate this issue.'

At 1525 GMT, Google said, 'The problem with Google Talk should be resolved,' but offered no additional details.