Google Opens Search and Gemini to Third-Party Apps to Shape the Agentic Web

We spend our digital lives hopping between dozens of single-purpose apps, but tech giants want to change that routine. Google is inviting any business or developer to build and submit third-party integrations into its ecosystem through a new developer portal. Instead of opening individual programs, users will interact with external services directly inside AI experiences like Search and Gemini.

That shift threatens to turn traditional app interfaces into invisible plumbing beneath conversational prompts. To make this happen, Google relies on standardized developer tools like cloud-hosted Model Context Protocol servers and AppFunctions APIs. Developers can register, test, and submit their work through the Google Connected Console, choosing whether their creation appears in Search, the Gemini app, or both.

Once live, these creators gain access to performance metrics including traffic, latency, and error rates while preserving their brand identity with verified logos. Google already hosts over fifty connected services in Gemini from prominent partners like Adobe and Peloton, with meditation app Calm joining soon. Our read is that this platform represents the early blueprint for a new kind of search optimization.

Just as websites once scrambled to rank on search engine results pages, businesses may soon need to optimize their services for AI agents to stay visible.

If consumers shift toward executing tasks entirely through conversational prompts, mastering this new ecosystem will determine which brands survive and which fade into obscurity.