Google Gemini has been hobbled by server-side errors for more than four hours on Wednesday, with thousands of users across the US and UK unable to submit prompts on either the web or mobile app. The outage, which began around 3:26 AM PDT, is producing "error 1076" and "error 1099" messages that block new queries.
Error 1076 is a handshake timeout on Google's servers, while error 1099 signals a backend session conflict that locks individual accounts out of the model, according to what Gemini itself told Tom's Guide. The latter is "almost always an internal issue on Google's side rather than a problem with your device."
Downdetector reports hit a US peak of 1,407 complaints, with 57% of reports pointing to the mobile app and 36% to the web version. UK reports stabilized around 450 but began climbing again as the morning wore on, per TechRadar. The problems are affecting both free and paid accounts, including Gemini Pro subscribers who pay for premium access.
Google acknowledged the incident on its Workspace Status Dashboard, writing that its "engineering team continues to investigate the issue." The company initially promised an update by 6:30 AM PDT but pushed that timeline to 8:00 AM PDT. "We apologize to all who are affected by the disruption," Google said in the status post.
A temporary workaround exists: immediately re-entering the same prompt after an error often pushes it through, since the connection pathway has already been established. Some users have also reported success by logging out and back in, or switching to a secondary Google account, error 1099 tends to stick to a specific account's backend session. The timing is awkward for Google.
The company just wrapped up its annual Google I/O conference, where it unveiled Gemini 3.5 Flash, a model designed for multi-step workflows and agentic AI tasks with far less human oversight. A prolonged outage undercuts the narrative that Gemini is ready for production-critical work.
For users who need an AI fix, alternatives are running without issues. Anthropic launched Claude Fable on Tuesday, a Mythos-level model available to paid subscribers that the company claims beats GPT 5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro.
Grok and ChatGPT remain operational as well.
Google's next status update is expected by 8:00 AM PDT (4:00 PM BST).
