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

Google on October 28 introduced the Connected Apps Platform, opening to outside developers a capability that until now lived inside Gemini and Google Search. According to TechCrunch, any business or developer that wants its service in front of Gemini or Search users can now submit an app and monitor how it performs across Google's AI experiences.

The integration path is unusually specific for a preview. Developers connect through a cloud-hosted MCP, or Model Context Protocol, server or Android MCP using the AppFunctions APIs, then register, test and submit the app through the Google Connected Console. At submission they choose whether the app appears in Search, in the Gemini app, or both.

Once live, developers can track traffic, latency and error rates, and keep control of their brand presentation, including verified logos and authenticated accounts. That matters commercially: when an assistant invokes a service, the user should still recognise the business standing behind the answer.

Google already has scale to build on. More than 50 connected apps are live in Gemini, including partners such as Adobe, Experian, Localiza and Peloton, alongside Google's own services from Workplace and Photos to YouTube Music and Google Home. Those apps will arrive in Search over the coming weeks; Search today has far fewer integrations, among them Instacart, Canva, YouTube Music and Yahoo Fantasy Football.

Google named meditation app Calm as another new partner, saying its app will soon launch on both Gemini and Search. The platform is in public preview for U.S. developers who join a waitlist, and Google did not say when it would become more broadly available.

Google is not alone in chasing this pattern. ChatGPT and Meta's Muse have pursued similar connector strategies, all built on the same bet: if people book, design and queue music inside an assistant, the standalone app icon loses some of its power as a distribution channel.

Seen historically, the Connected Apps Platform is closer to an indexing mechanism for the agentic web. Companies once fought for position in search results through SEO; now they compete to be callable and recommendable by an AI. Choosing MCP as the integration standard also turns a developer convention into platform infrastructure.

Three things are worth watching: when the waitlist gives way to global availability, whether Google publishes clear rules for how apps are ranked and surfaced inside answers, and how it balances its own products against third-party partners once the catalogue grows.