A glitch in the system: Bing, Outlook.com, Cortana go down, come back

A few minutes ago, from about 11:25 am PST or so until about twenty minutes later, Bing.com and a number of Microsoft services went dark.  Multiple reports on Twitter showed that the outage was widespread, if not long lived.  Chip Locke, a “random coder for Bing” and @doubleyewdee on Twitter, confirmed the outage and the restoration, albeit with a bit of tongue-in-cheek:

We know about the Bing outage and have found the cause. Hamsters being brought back to speed.

— Chip Locke (@doubleyewdee) January 2, 2015

And we are all clear. Bing/MSN/Store etc are all back. Responsible hamsters have been sacked for dereliction of duties.

— Chip Locke (@doubleyewdee) January 2, 2015

As of now, everything seems to be back up and running.  Let us know if you hit any further snags.