Yahoo went down

[riso]

Yahoo -– one of the most highly trafficked websites in the world –- is currently down (as of 5:40 p.m. ET). [Update: As of 6:10 p.m. ET, Yahoo appears to be back online]

The homepage of Yahoo is simply showing a plain text “Server Hangup” message in the browser. However, Yahoo verticals like Sports, News and Finance appear to be working just fine.

While almost certainly unrelated (but an amusing coincidence), the downtime comes hours after Google posted massive earnings and less than a day since new rumors surfaced that AOL and a number of private equity firms may be putting together a plan to swoop in and acquire the languishing Yahoo.

From Yahoo:

“For a brief period this afternoon, Yahoo.com was inaccessible to some users. We have identified the issue and are working to correct it immediately. We know that this may have caused some inconvenience and we apologize to our users who might have been affected.”