Google opens Gemini and Search to outside apps with new Connected Apps Platform

Google has launched a Connected Apps Platform that opens Gemini and Google Search to apps built by outside businesses and developers, TechCrunch reports. The platform is available in public preview to US developers who join a waitlist, and Google has not said when access will widen.

From curated list to open submissions

Connected apps, which arrived in Gemini and Search earlier this year, let users authorize third-party services and then carry out tasks inside Google's AI surfaces — putting together a Canva flyer or assembling a YouTube Music playlist, for instance. Until now, the selection was effectively Google's to make. The new platform changes that: any developer can build and submit an app, decide whether it appears in Search, in the Gemini app, or in both, and watch how it performs once live.

Built on MCP

Google has laid out a concrete pipeline for would-be integrators. A developer starts by connecting their app to either a cloud-hosted MCP (Model Context Protocol) server or Android MCP through the AppFunctions APIs, then uses the Google Connected Console to register, test and submit the build. After launch, the console surfaces operational metrics such as traffic, latency and error rates, and developers keep control over branding elements like verified logos and authenticated accounts.

The reliance on MCP is worth noting. The protocol has become a common way for AI models to reach external tools and data, and Google building a first-party distribution channel on top of it ties the company's app ecosystem to that emerging standard.

An app catalog already in place

Google is not starting from zero. TechCrunch counts more than 50 connected apps already available in Gemini, including ones from Adobe, Experian, Localiza and Peloton, alongside Google's own services such as Workspace, Photos, YouTube Music and Google Home. Search has fewer integrations so far — Instacart, Canva, YouTube Music and Yahoo Fantasy Football among them — but the Gemini catalog is set to appear in Search over the coming weeks. Google also named meditation app Calm as a new partner, with its app due to launch on both surfaces.

Why it matters

The launch is Google's answer to a shift its rivals are already chasing. ChatCrunch-style integrations exist at ChatGPT and Meta's Muse, and the underlying bet is that consumers will gradually stop opening individual apps and instead get things done through whichever AI assistant they prefer. If that prediction holds, the platforms hosting those assistants become the new gatekeepers of consumer attention.

TechCrunch draws a comparison with the early days of the web: much as SEO let businesses compete for visibility in search rankings, submitting a connected app may become the baseline move for any service that wants to stay reachable on an agentic web where assistants act on users' behalf.

For Google the stakes are doubled. Search depends on users arriving at a results page, and an agent-driven web could route actions around that page entirely. By making Search and Gemini programmatically reachable — and by courting a long tail of developers rather than a hand-picked few — Google is working to ensure requests, and the activity they trigger, still flow through its own surfaces.

There is also a tension to watch. The app-store model that Google already operates on Android shows how a distribution gate can evolve into a revenue and policy gate, and a connected-apps ecosystem run by an AI provider could follow a similar path. For now, the platform is simply an invitation. Whether developers come to treat it as essential infrastructure, the way they once treated search listings, will depend on how quickly users shift from browsing to asking.