Google admits Gemini trails on coding, ships 3.6 Flash as a stopgap
On Alphabet’s Q2 2026 earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said Google needs to improve its coding and agentic coding capabilities. He also said a larger Gemini 4 base model is essential to staying competitive going forward.
Why Google is behind on agentic coding
Pichai had flagged the same gap in May on the Hard Fork podcast, saying Google was “a bit behind” in agentic coding because it lacks a developer-facing product that generates the kind of usage data competitors are already collecting. No product in that lane means no feedback loop.
The Gemini 3.5 Pro delay
Google announced the 3.5 series at I/O in May, launched 3.5 Flash at the same time, and planned to ship 3.5 Pro the following month. That did not happen. According to Bloomberg, a coding performance issue caused the delay. An update to the model’s training data aimed at fixing those coding problems did not produce the expected results. The model is now described as “currently testing with partners” with no confirmed release date.
Two senior researchers left Google in June during the unrest that followed: Noam Shazeer, co-lead of Gemini, departed for OpenAI, and John Jumper from AlphaFold left for Anthropic. Both departures were tied to concerns about Google’s position in AI coding tools.
What Gemini 3.6 Flash actually is
Google shipped Gemini 3.6 Flash one day before the earnings call. It produces 17% fewer output tokens than 3.5 Flash, which cuts costs while improving coding performance. On the DeepSWE coding benchmark, 3.6 Flash scores 49%, up from 37% with 3.5 Flash. Google calls it the new standard workhorse. Both 3.5 Flash and the new Flash-Lite tier are being integrated into Google Search.
Where every Gemini model stands today
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Available, general-purpose
- Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite: Available, faster and lower cost
- Gemini 3.6 Flash: Available, updated workhorse with coding improvements
- Gemini 3.5 Pro: In partner testing, no release date confirmed
- Gemini 4: In pretraining, no timeline announced
Pichai described the Gemini 4 pretraining effort as the company’s most ambitious yet. The near-term test is whether 3.5 Pro ships and whether Google can hold the monthly release cadence Pichai mentioned on the call.
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