Econintersect:  Have you checked your g-mail account this morning?  With reports that as many as half a million g-mail accounts have been accidentally cleared, Google has said that about 150,000 accounts have been affected.  There is still considerable confusion about what has actually happened.  The problems were first reported on Twitter when users were unable to log in to their e-mail accounts.

Follow up:

The problem appears to be that certain g-mail accounts were reset to new user status.  In some cases years of saved e-mails, messages, attachments and Google Chat logs had vanished when users logged in to their "new" accounts.

What is going on is still not clear.  From engadget.com:

Google's provided promising but terribly vague guidance on when the situation will be resolved: "Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change."

Sources:  The Daily Beast and engadget.com