Google Connected Apps Platform Opens Gemini and Search to More Apps

Direct answer: Google has opened its Connected Apps Platform so that more businesses can offer their services inside Search and Gemini, rather than only appearing as a link that sends people elsewhere. A user will be able to link a third-party app and take a real action — designing a flyer, building a playlist, or using another partner service — from within Google’s own AI experiences. For UK small businesses the honest headline is more restrained: the preview is currently in beta for developers in the US, so the immediate opportunity is not a sign-up form, but preparation.

What happened

On 28 October 2026, Google debuted its Connected Apps Platform, a move reported by TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez that makes it easier for businesses to connect their apps to Google’s AI experiences across Search and Gemini. The announcement matters less because of any single new app, and more because of what it signals about where Google thinks search is heading. For years, the deal between a business and a search engine was simple: you published good content, you earned a ranking, and a curious customer clicked through to your site. The Connected Apps Platform changes the second half of that deal. Instead of only pointing at your business, Google now wants your business to be usable inside its own products.

Connected apps, in Google’s framing, let users securely link and interact with third-party services and take specific actions. The examples Google gave are deliberately everyday ones: connect to Canva to design a flyer, or connect to YouTube Music to build a playlist. Neither example requires the user to open a separate app, hunt for a login, or start from scratch. The service arrives where the question was asked. That is the core idea, and it is worth holding on to as you read the rest of this article, because everything else — the developer tools, the console, the brand controls — exists to make that one moment reliable.

The timing is also part of the story. Google already has more than 50 connected apps available in Gemini. Those include partners such as Adobe, Experian, Localiza and Peloton, alongside Google’s own services including Workplace, Photos, YouTube Music and Google Home. Those Gemini apps will come to Google Search over the next few weeks, according to the report. Search today has fewer integrations, featuring Instacart, Canva, YouTube Music, Yahoo Fantasy Football and others. Meditation app Calm is a new partner whose app will soon launch on both Gemini and Search. In other words, this is not a launch from zero. It is the opening of a door that was already ajar for large partners, now with a platform, a console and a waitlist behind it.

There is, however, a clear limit that UK readers need to hear plainly. The platform preview is currently available in beta to developers in the US, who sign up via a waitlist. Google did not share when it will become more broadly available. That sentence should shape every decision a UK firm makes after reading this news. It would be wrong to write a plan that assumes a UK business can apply tomorrow, get approved next week, and appear inside Gemini the week after. It would be equally wrong to ignore the announcement entirely until a UK launch is confirmed, because the groundwork that makes a business ready for this kind of surface takes months, not days, and much of it pays off in ordinary search right now.

TechCrunch frames the shift with a comparison that is worth repeating carefully: just as SEO once allowed companies to show up in search rankings, connected apps may decide who shows up on what the article calls the “agentic web” — a web where AI assistants do things on a user’s behalf, rather than only finding pages for them to read. That comparison is useful, but it should not be overstated. SEO is not dead, and a connected app does not replace a website. What changes is the range of ways a customer can reach you, and the range of moments in which Google, rather than your own site or app, is the place where the action happens.

How the Connected Apps Platform works

Only part of this section comes from the announcement itself, and it helps to separate the sourced facts from the general explanation that follows. The sourced facts are these. Developers integrate with a cloud-hosted MCP (Model Context Protocol) server or Android MCP using AppFunctions APIs, then use the Google Connected Console to register, test and submit their app. Developers choose whether the app is available via Search, the Gemini app, or both. After launch, developers can track traffic, latency and error rates, and maintain control over brand identity such as verified logos and authenticated accounts.

Now, in plain terms — and this is general explanation, not a claim about Google’s specific implementation — MCP is a shared way for an AI system to ask another piece of software to do something, and to understand what that software can do. Think of it as a menu with rules. Without something like it, every AI assistant would need a custom, one-off connection to every app it wanted to use, which would be slow, fragile and expensive to maintain. With a common protocol, an assistant can discover that a service offers, say, booking, ordering or design, and can pass the right details across in a structured way. The cloud-hosted option means a developer can run that connection on their own servers and expose it to Google; the Android option, using AppFunctions APIs, covers apps already installed on a phone, so the phone itself can carry out the action.

The Google Connected Console is the other half of the picture. Registration, testing and submission may sound like admin, but for a small business they are the difference between a promising demo and a service customers can trust. A console gives Google a place to check that an app behaves, that it identifies itself honestly, and that it handles a user’s linked account properly. It also gives the developer a place to watch what happens after launch: how much traffic is coming through, how quickly the app responds, and how often it errors. Those three measures — traffic, latency and error rates — are the ones Google names, and they are the right ones. An app that is slow or unreliable inside Gemini will feel worse than no app at all, because the customer blames the business whose name is on the action, not the platform underneath it.

Brand control matters for the same reason. Google says developers can maintain control over brand identity such as verified logos and authenticated accounts. For a customer, that is a trust signal: the thing they are linking is really the business they think it is. For a business, it is a guardrail. If anyone could present themselves as your shop, your clinic or your studio inside Search, the risk of impersonation and confusion would be serious. Verified logos and authenticated accounts do not solve every trust problem, but they show Google understands that actions carry more risk than links. A link can be wrong and the user simply goes back. An action can book the wrong thing, charge the wrong account, or share the wrong details, so the bar has to be higher.

It is also worth noting what the platform is not, based on what has been reported so far. It is not a promise that every app will appear in every surface. Developers choose Search, Gemini, or both, which means a business may be present in one place and absent in another, at least at first. It is not a replacement for a business’s own app or website either. The connected app is a doorway into a service, not the whole building. A customer who discovers you through Gemini still needs somewhere to go for the full relationship: your booking system, your support, your terms, your human contact when something goes wrong. Businesses that treat a connected app as a substitute for all of that will be disappointed, and possibly exposed, when an edge case arrives.

Connected apps vs SEO: what changes and what does not

The comparison with SEO is the most tempting part of this story, and the easiest to get wrong, so it deserves a careful section of its own. Traditional SEO is about being found. You create pages that answer real questions, you structure them so search engines can understand them, you earn links and reviews, and over time you rank for the searches your customers actually type. The reward is a click, and after the click, your website has to do the rest: persuade, book, sell, answer, reassure. That work has not gone away, and nothing in this announcement suggests Google intends to abolish it.

What connected apps add is a second kind of visibility: being usable. A business that is only findable can still lose the customer at the moment of action, because the customer has to leave the search result, open a new tab or app, log in, and start again. Each step loses people. A connected app collapses those steps. The customer stays in the flow they started in, and the business meets them there. For a small firm, that difference could matter most for repeatable, well-defined actions: booking a table, reserving a slot, starting a design, checking availability, reordering a familiar product. Those are the tasks where customers do not want a research project; they want the thing done.

What does not change is the need to be a real, trustworthy business with clear information. If anything, the agentic web raises the standard. A search result can be vague and still earn a click from a curious visitor. An action cannot be vague. It needs to know what you offer, when you are available, what it costs, what happens if the customer changes their mind, and who to contact when it goes wrong. Businesses with messy, contradictory information across the web — different opening hours on different directories, an out-of-date phone number, a booking page that no longer works — will find those problems amplified when an assistant tries to act on their behalf. The assistant will either fail, or worse, act on the wrong facts with confidence.

Another thing that does not change is the importance of owning the customer relationship. A connected app gives you reach, but it gives Google the surface. That is a trade, and small businesses should enter it with their eyes open. If most of your bookings start to flow through someone else’s assistant, you become more dependent on that assistant’s rules, ranking and presentation. That is not a reason to refuse the opportunity, but it is a reason to keep your own channels healthy: your website, your email list, your direct booking route, your repeat customers who know your name and come to you directly. The businesses that will do best on the agentic web are likely to be the ones that treat it as an extra front door, not as the only door.

There is also a practical difference between a connected app and a chatbot plugin, a comparison many readers will reach for. A plugin, in the older sense, often felt like a bolt-on: a chatbot could call it, but the experience was uneven, the branding was thin, and the user was never quite sure where they were. A connected app inside Search or Gemini, as Google describes it, is meant to feel native: securely linked, brand-verified, and available in the place where the user already is. Whether Google delivers on that promise in practice remains to be seen, especially outside the US, but the ambition is different. This is not a novelty feature for enthusiasts. It is an attempt to make third-party actions a normal part of how people use Google.

For a deeper look at how AI assistants are already changing the way small firms win work, see our guide on AI agents for small business in the UK. And for the wider context of Google’s recent moves, our round-up of five Google AI changes small businesses should know from October 2026 puts this announcement alongside the other shifts landing in the same month.

What it means for UK small businesses

Start with the blunt truth, because anything else would mislead you. A UK small business cannot join this preview directly today on the basis of what has been reported. The beta is for developers in the US, via a waitlist, and Google has not given a date for broader availability. If someone offers to get your UK firm “listed in Gemini connected apps” this week for a fee, treat that claim with great scepticism and ask exactly what they are selling, because the reported facts do not support it.

That limitation, however, does not make the story irrelevant in the UK. It makes it a preparation story. The firms that will be ready when a UK route opens — whenever that is — are the firms that already look machine-readable, bookable and trustworthy to Google and to other AI systems. The firms that will struggle are the ones whose online presence is a patchwork: a website that has not been updated in two years, a Google Business Profile with the wrong hours, a booking system that only works by phone, and reviews scattered across platforms with no replies. An AI assistant cannot fix that patchwork. It will simply route around it, towards a competitor whose details are clean.

Think about the customer journey in concrete terms. A person in Manchester wants a flyer designed for a weekend market stall. Today they might search, click to Canva, and start designing. With a connected app, they might ask Gemini to design a flyer and find themselves inside Canva’s flow without ever consciously “going to Canva” at all. The brand still matters — Canva is named, its logo is verified — but the journey starts inside Google. Now translate that to a small UK firm: a hair salon, a letting agent, a café, a physiotherapy clinic, a local trades business. If a customer can ask for an appointment, a quote or a table and have the assistant complete that step with your business, you gain a chance to win work at the exact moment of intent. If you cannot be acted on in that way, you are still findable, but you are one extra step away from the customer, and extra steps cost bookings.

There is also a subtler implication for how small firms think about their websites. For years, the advice has been to write pages that rank. That advice still holds, but it now sits alongside a second question: can a machine understand what you actually do, and can it do it? A page that says “we offer flexible appointments” is helpful for a human reader and nearly useless for an assistant that needs to know which days, which times, how long, and what it costs. Structured, specific information — real opening hours, real services with real prices or price ranges, real booking links that work — becomes more valuable, not less, as AI surfaces grow. This is not about gaming a system. It is about removing ambiguity so that a customer, human or assisted, can act with confidence.

The honest limits section below goes into the risks in detail, but one UK-specific point belongs here too. UK firms operate under UK consumer, data protection and advertising rules, and those rules do not pause because an action happened inside Gemini. If an assistant books something on a customer’s behalf, the business still needs clear terms, a cancellation route, and a way to handle mistakes. If personal data flows between a user’s linked account and a business’s system, the business still needs a lawful basis and a sensible retention policy. Preparation, therefore, is not only technical. It is about having the boring, correct paperwork and processes behind the shiny new front door, so that when the door opens, nothing embarrassing falls out of it.

None of this means a small firm should rush to hire a developer to build an MCP server this week. For most UK small businesses, that would be premature spending on a platform they cannot yet join. The right response is staged: fix the foundations now, watch for a UK route, and be ready to move quickly when it appears. The next section sets out that staged plan in practical order.

How a UK firm can prepare now

Preparation sounds vague until it is broken into steps a busy owner can actually do in an afternoon a week. The list below is in the order that makes sense for most small firms, starting with the foundations that help in ordinary search today and ending with the steps that only matter once a connected-app route exists.

First, audit your business information everywhere it appears. Check your Google Business Profile, your website footer and contact page, and the main directories your customers use. Do the name, address, phone number, opening hours and website match exactly? Are seasonal hours correct? Is the phone number one that is actually answered during the hours you claim? Fix every mismatch you find. This is unglamorous work, and it is exactly the work an AI assistant will rely on. Inconsistency is not a minor cosmetic issue on the agentic web; it is a reason for an assistant to choose a competitor or to refuse to act at all.

Second, make at least one core action bookable or orderable without a phone call. You do not need to automate everything. Pick the single action that brings in the most revenue or the most enquiries — booking an appointment, reserving a table, requesting a quote, ordering a repeat product — and make sure it works end to end on a phone, without an account the customer does not already have, and with a confirmation the customer actually receives. Test it yourself, on your own phone, as a stranger would. If it breaks, fix it before you worry about anything more advanced. A connected app is, at heart, a way to trigger an action like this from somewhere else. If the action itself is broken, no platform will save it.

Third, sort out your brand verification and visual identity. Make sure your logo is current, legible at small sizes, and used consistently across your website, your Google Business Profile and your social profiles. If Google later asks for verified logos and authenticated accounts, as it does for connected apps, you want to be able to supply clean assets and prove ownership without a scramble. The same applies to your domain and your email: a business that sends mail from a free personal address and hosts its site on an unrelated domain looks harder to verify than one with a consistent, professional footprint.

Fourth, build a habit around reviews, and reply to them. Reviews are already a ranking and trust factor in search, and they are likely to matter even more when an assistant has to choose between similar businesses on a customer’s behalf. An assistant cannot inspect your premises or meet your staff. It can read what past customers said, how recent those comments are, and whether you responded when something went wrong. Aim for a steady flow of genuine reviews, never bought or faked, and reply to the difficult ones with grace and specifics. That record is part of your machine-readable reputation, whether you think of it that way or not.

Fifth, structure your website’s key facts so machines can read them without guessing. This does not require a developer for most firms. It means having a dedicated page or section for each core service, with the price or price range, what is included, how long it takes, and how to book. It means keeping your frequently asked questions up to date and answering them directly, rather than with marketing fluff. It means using clear headings and consistent wording for the same service everywhere on your site. If you work with a web developer or agency, ask them specifically about structured data for your business type — LocalBusiness, services, opening hours and reviews — and whether it is correctly implemented. You do not need to understand every technical detail, but you should be able to ask the question.

Sixth, decide what you will and will not let an assistant do on your behalf, before anyone asks you. Will you allow instant booking, or do you want a human confirmation step? Will you allow a quote to be generated automatically, or only a callback request? What happens if an assistant books the wrong slot, or a customer claims they never authorised it? Writing down those answers now, even briefly, saves a panicked decision later. It also helps you brief a developer or agency properly when the time comes, because you will be able to say what the action should be, what its limits are, and what a good outcome looks like.

Seventh, set up a simple way to measure where enquiries come from. If you cannot tell today whether a booking came from Google Search, from social media, from a repeat customer, or from a referral, you will not be able to tell tomorrow whether an AI surface is helping you. You do not need expensive analytics. A booking form that asks “how did you hear about us”, a dedicated phone number or email for web enquiries, and a monthly glance at your Google Business Profile insights will do for most small firms. When connected apps arrive, Google says developers will be able to track traffic, latency and error rates. That is useful, but it is no substitute for knowing, in your own records, which channel actually produced paying customers.

Eighth, and only when a UK route is genuinely available, talk to a developer about integration. At that point the questions are concrete: do you need a cloud-hosted MCP server or an Android integration, what actions will you expose, how will you handle authentication securely, and how will you test before submission through the Google Connected Console? Until then, keep the conversation at the level of preparation, not procurement. Spending now on a bespoke integration for a beta you cannot enter is the most likely way for a small firm to waste money on this story.

Honest limits / what to watch

The first limit is the one already stated, but it bears repeating because it changes the timeline for everything else: the preview is US-developer beta, via a waitlist, with no broader availability date shared. Any UK timeline you read elsewhere that gives a firm month for a UK launch should be treated as speculation unless it cites a new Google statement. Watch for that statement, not for rumours.

The second limit is concentration. Google already has more than 50 connected apps in Gemini, including large partners and its own services. Early surfaces tend to favour businesses with the resources to integrate first, test thoroughly, and support a new channel. That does not mean small firms are locked out forever, but it does mean the first wave will look corporate. The test for whether this platform genuinely helps small businesses will be what happens in the second and third waves: whether integration becomes affordable, whether agencies and booking platforms offer it as a standard feature, and whether a small firm can join without hiring specialist developers.

The third limit is measurement and control. Google says developers can track traffic, latency and error rates after launch, and control brand identity. That is reassuring as far as it goes, but small firms should watch for the details that are not yet public: how prominently a connected app is presented versus a competitor’s, whether placement depends on advertising or other commercial terms, how disputes are handled when an assistant makes a mistake, and what data Google and the developer each receive about the user. Those details will determine whether the platform is a fair marketplace or a new gatekeeper, and they cannot be judged from a launch announcement alone.

The fourth limit is the risk of over-automation. An assistant that can act is powerful, and powerful tools make confident mistakes. A booking made for the wrong day, a design started with the wrong details, a playlist built from the wrong account — these are small errors with real customer-service costs. Businesses should insist on confirmation steps for anything that costs money or cannot be easily undone, and they should keep a human route open for every automated one. The goal is to remove friction for the customer, not to remove the customer from the decision.

The fifth limit is the one closest to home: your own readiness. A connected app will not fix a weak offer, a broken booking flow, or a reputation problem. It will expose them faster, to more people, in a surface you control less directly. That is why this article spends more time on preparation than on excitement. The firms that benefit most from new distribution are usually the firms that were already easy to buy from. If that description does not fit your business yet, the most valuable response to this announcement is not to chase the platform, but to become that kind of business first.

Finally, watch how Search itself evolves over the next few weeks as the existing Gemini apps arrive there. The report says those apps will come to Search over the next few weeks. That rollout, even without a UK developer beta, will show ordinary users what connected apps feel like in Search, which actions become normal, and which partners appear most often. Pay attention to your own searches, to what your customers mention, and to whether enquiries start arriving with a new pattern — for example, customers who seem to have started a task inside Google rather than on your site. Those early signals, gathered informally, will tell you more about timing than any press release.

FAQs

What is Google’s Connected Apps Platform?

It is Google’s way for businesses to connect their apps to its AI experiences in Search and Gemini, so users can link a third-party service and take a specific action — such as designing a flyer in Canva or building a playlist in YouTube Music — without leaving Google’s surface.

Can UK businesses join the Connected Apps Platform yet?

Not directly. The platform preview reported on 28 October 2026 is in beta for developers in the US, who join via a waitlist. Google has not said when it will become more broadly available, so UK firms should prepare their business data, booking flows and brand verification now rather than waiting for an invitation that may not arrive soon.

How is a connected app different from a normal search listing?

A search listing sends someone to your website. A connected app lets someone do something inside Search or Gemini itself, using your service — for example starting a design, checking a booking or playing music. That is a shift from being found to being usable in the place where the customer already is.

What do developers need to build a connected app?

According to Google’s announcement as reported by TechCrunch, developers integrate with a cloud-hosted MCP (Model Context Protocol) server or Android MCP using AppFunctions APIs, then use the Google Connected Console to register, test and submit their app, choosing whether it appears in Search, the Gemini app, or both.

What should a UK small business do first?

Start with the basics that will matter whatever form the platform takes in the UK: accurate business information everywhere, a booking or ordering flow that works without a phone call, verified brand assets, genuine reviews, and a way to measure where enquiries actually come from. Those steps help in ordinary search today and put you in a stronger position when connected apps arrive.

If this announcement has made you rethink how customers will find and use your business in the next year, that is the right instinct — and the right next step is a practical one, not a purchase. Get your foundations checked, your booking flow tested, and your plan for the agentic web written down before you spend anything on a new integration. CTA: Get a Free AI Consultation