I have been having the same problems today as well, tried on 3 different pcs, disabled chat in gmail settings, tried IE Safari and FF, even tried it on an iPad since I was at the verizon store earlier. G+ works, talk on my droid worked, and iChat worked as well. I see a few contacts have been restored, but not all are showing as online in my Gmail yet. -- they seem to be coming back one by one....