A rather remote possibility is a DNS Service failure due to the Malware discussed at:

Tech: A REAL Internet Shutdown – Malware

The malware that's the subject of that thread redirected some internet access requests to phony sites. It does appear that not all accesses were redirected, although none of the reports on the malware that I saw directly addressed the issue of what was redirected.

The FBI phony phony sites that intercepted the redirected connections and redirected them to the appropriate sites were shutdown on 09 July, with the warning that anyone still infected could lose all internet connection at that time.

SOME ISPs were also intercepting redirected connections and redirecting them, so shutdown of the FBI sites would not necessarily have caused an immediate loss of connection for those being redirected for people who use an ISP that was redirecting redirected contacts; but if the sites that were redirecting the redirected connections stopped redirecting them later than the FBI did most sites would still remain accessible, until the redirecting ISP sites stopped redirecting what was being redirected.

It does appear that the Redirector malware did not redirect everything, but may have passed connections that didn't look profitable on without redirection. Googledotcom would be a target for redirection simply because you have to go to/through there for gmail, and email accounts of any kind probably were targeted for redirection by the malware redirectors. Sites that didn't offer the likelihood of profitable information may not have been redirected by the malware so they should still work even after all the various redirectors of redirected connections shut down.

While the likelihood that this is the current problem is probably fairly remote, the directions for quickly checking it out are given in the thread to which the link above directs you. The FBI test site may also have been shut off already, but I'd expect the links to the DNS Service group sites a few posts down in the thread should direct you usefully.

(Just gotta check out all the possibilities.)

John