Google Cloud Next 2025: Agent Interoperability Gets a Protocol

Google’s April event covered new TPU generations and model releases, but the item with the longest tail was the push toward a standard for agents to communicate with each other across vendors.

Why interoperability is the interesting bet

Single-agent products are straightforward. Systems where several agents, potentially from different vendors, hand work between each other are where the operational questions live — identity, authorization, audit, and what happens when one link in the chain misbehaves.

A protocol does not answer those questions. It makes them answerable in one place instead of per integration.

The practical read for now

Agent interoperability standards are worth tracking and premature to build a product around. What is not premature: making sure whatever you build has a clear boundary where an external system could plug in later, and an authorization model that would survive that.