Google opens Gemini and Search to outside apps

Google unveiled a Connected Apps Platform that lets outside businesses plug their services into its AI products, extending a feature already live in Gemini and Search that lets users link third-party apps and act on them directly — connecting Canva to design a flyer, say, or YouTube Music to build a playlist.

Until now, which services could connect was entirely up to Google. The new platform opens that process to any business or developer that wants in. To get set up, developers choose between an Android MCP route built on the AppFunctions APIs or a cloud-hosted MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, then register, test and submit the build through Google’s Connected Console. Developers can make it available on Search, Gemini, or both, and once live, they get traffic, latency and error-rate data while keeping control of their brand’s logos and verified accounts.

The bet is one familiar from the SEO era: just as ranking well in search drove visibility for decades, having an app reachable from inside Gemini or Search could become one of the ways businesses get discovered on what Google and others call the “agentic web.” Rival consumer AI products, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Muse, have tried their own versions of app integrations, but the approach only works if there is a wide enough range of connected services to make switching worthwhile.

Gemini already lists more than 50 Connected Apps, from partners such as Adobe, Experian, Localiza and Peloton alongside Google’s own Workplace, Photos, YouTube Music and Google Home. Search currently offers fewer, including Instacart, Canva, YouTube Music and Yahoo Fantasy Football, but Google says the same roster is coming to Search over the next few weeks, and meditation app Calm will soon launch on both surfaces. The platform is in public preview for US developers on a waitlist; Google has not said when it will open more broadly.

Why it matters

By turning connected apps into an open submission system rather than a closed partner list, Google is inviting the same kind of discovery race that reshaped SEO — only this time the ranking page is an AI assistant’s own answers.