Gemini outage largely resolved: What went wrong for Google’s AI

June 11, 2026, 6:26 a.m. PT

Throughout yesterday’s Gemini outage – one of the largest AI-related outages in Gemini history – we weren’t sure what the cause was. Google shed some light on the subject in its final update.

“Based on preliminary analysis, the issue was triggered by a performance issue in our backend database that impacted retrieval of the Gemini app tool catalog,” the company wrote.

In simple terms, this means that a problem behind the scenes prevented Gemini from extracting the right information to accomplish its tasks. Google engineers solved the problem by optimizing the load distribution on the main database.

CNET has contacted Google for additional information on the cause of this issue and what, if anything, will be done to prevent a future outage. We did not receive a response immediately.

Google still notes on its Workspace Health dashboard that the service outage is in progress, with some reports still in progress on DownDetector, although down significantly from earlier in the day.

Google says its next update will arrive at 8:30 p.m. PT, but maintains that most of its users are no longer affected by the disruption.

And just as people like me on the East Coast are wrapping up their workday, Google says its mitigation measures have worked well enough that the “majority of users,” in Matthew McConaughey’s words, are OK, OK, OK.

“Our engineering team applied mitigation measures to reduce the impact and confirmed that the majority of users no longer experience the impact,” Google wrote. “We will continue to monitor the stability of the service.”

Still no word on the cause of the problem. West Coast residents, you should be back in action for the rest of the day. (Sorry, if you were enjoying an AI-free workday.)

On a rough day for AI users, Anthropic also reported some issues with its AI chatbot, Claude. On a status update page, the company said it had resolved issues with its Haiku 4.5 model after reports of malfunctions.

These issues should have been resolved by 10:21 a.m. PT, according to Anthropic. It’s unclear what exactly caused the problems.

Anthropic abandoned the first of its Highly anticipated Myth-level AI models Tuesday. It’s called Fable 5, and if you pay for Claude, you can use it now. Anthropic said it anticipates demand will be very high, so it’s possible that Claude users will experience more access issues in the near future.

Do you think it’s a good thing for AI enthusiasts that OpenAI’s ChatGPT had a quiet day?

Google confirmed in an update at 11:37 a.m. PT that it was rolling out fixes and that there were signs of recovery.

“Our engineering team has applied mitigation measures to reduce the impact and continues to investigate the root cause,” Google wrote. “We are seeing signs of recovery and will continue to monitor progress.”

Reports submitted to DownDetector have steadily declined since the peak of more than 1,600 Gemini malfunction incidents earlier today.

But since Google has millions of users, it’s very likely that many people will still have issues using Gemini in their Workspace apps.

Gemini Application VP Josh Woodward confirmed in an X message at 10:31 a.m. PT that some fixes to the Gemini outage were in progress.

A “mitigation” or fix is ​​on the way, Google confirmed at 9:24 a.m. PT. There is no ETA on when it will be rolled out.

Google still hasn’t given us many details about the underlying problem, but has confirmed that error codes 1099 and 1076 are part of the problem. I saw these error codes appear in the lower left corner of my screen, although they may vary depending on the app you’re using.

Keep scrolling to see which apps and platforms are affected. There is still no workaround or temporary fix.

CNET uses Google Workspace, so I looked through my Drive, Docs, and Sheets earlier this morning to see if I was one of the affected customers. Now my time as “marked as safe” is over, so I can share what the error looks like.

I first encountered the error when I asked Gemini (via Chrome on my Mac) to parse the contents of a PDF I downloaded. I selected the flash model, which I immediately knew wouldn’t be the best model for the task after hitting “Run.” But I didn’t have to wait long to correct my mistake, because Gemini couldn’t perform the task at all. It worked for a second or two before returning to the prompt screen. In the lower left corner, error code 1099 appeared, too quickly for me to screenshot it.

I had to see if it was a coincidence. I started a new discussion with a seemingly simple web search for Gemini. Same thing happened: it tried to run for a second before stopping almost immediately. This time it sent me back to the main home page and had a different error code, shown above.

Currently, there is no way around this issue. Luckily for me, these are two tasks that I don’t necessarily need Gemini’s help with.

In an update posted at 8:10 a.m. PT, Google said the Gemini app in Workspace, which includes Drive, Docs, and Sheets, was malfunctioning on the following platforms:

• Web
• Mac OS
• iOS
• Android
• Gemini in Chrome

These are the platforms that show the “something went wrong” error. There is still no workaround. Google said it would release another update at 9:30 a.m. PT/12:30 p.m. ET.

Google has integrated its Gemini AI into as many products as possible. So when I see something like “Gemini is broken”, I think of all the Google products that have integrated the AI ​​system over the past few years.

Today’s problem is not widespread; according to Google, this only affects Workspace users. I checked my Google Health app, which has become the old Fitbit app, and had a conversation with the chatbot about why the fact that I feel like I’m catching a cold isn’t showing up in my biometrics. Was this information useful? As Gemini told me, I shouldn’t trust him for medical advice, so not really. But this sparked reactions.

As companies like Google integrate AI into more and more of their products, this creates another potential source of breakage.

Google has not yet indicated what the problem is with Gemini, but for Wo users rkspace, this results in errors saying: “Something went wrong.”

Google classifies it as a service interruption and not an outage. There is no workaround at 8 a.m. Pacific Time.

Most likely, Google’s engineering teams detected the problem late last night or early this morning, before many of us logged into work at 8 a.m. They are currently trying to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it.

We’ll be here to track how the issue affects you and when it’s finally resolved.