Google opens a self-serve path for any app to join Gemini and Search

Google opened a self-serve preview on October 28 that lets any developer with a working MCP server apply to put their app inside Gemini conversations and Google Search's AI Mode, replacing a process that had run almost entirely through hand-picked partnership deals. The new Connected Apps Platform, reported first by TechCrunch and confirmed on Google's own developer site, gives businesses a single integration path into both surfaces instead of building one connector for Gemini and a separate one for Search.

What actually changed

Until now, the apps users could link inside Gemini or Search's AI Mode, things like Instacart, Canva and YouTube Music, got there because Google struck a deal with them directly. The Connected Apps Platform turns that into an application process: developers stand up a remote MCP server and implement OAuth 2.1 so Gemini can act on a user's behalf, or ship a client-side integration through the Jetpack AppFunctions SDK for Android. They register, test and publish through a new Google Connected Console, then choose whether the app shows up in Search, Gemini, or both.

Google's own framing for developers is blunt about the point of consolidating the two paths: it wants businesses to "enable once and run Google-wide", rather than maintaining parallel integrations as it adds surfaces. The preview is limited to developers based in the US, sign-ups go through a waitlist, and Google has not said when or how it will expand eligibility, according to Android Authority's coverage of the launch.

The roster already includes Adobe, Experian, Localiza and Peloton inside Gemini, with Instacart, Canva, YouTube Music and two fantasy sports apps either live in Search's AI Mode or arriving there in the coming weeks. Calm is the one new name Google called out by launching across both products at once, which suggests Google is still recruiting the partners it wants in the pilot rather than treating the application queue as the only door in.

Who this actually affects

This is not a channel for every B2B software vendor. It's built for apps with a discrete action a Gemini or Search user might want done without leaving the conversation: book something, generate something, add something to a cart, play something. A project management tool, a security product or most pure analytics software doesn't have an obvious action to expose this way, at least not yet. Where it matters is for software with a consumer-facing or prosumer task layer, design tools, scheduling and booking products, content generators, and for any vendor whose product is already reachable through an MCP server built for a different purpose, since that work can likely be repointed at this preview with less new engineering than it looks like at first glance.

The comparison worth sitting with is early app-store placement or early browser extension listings: a small number of vendors get in before the rules, the ranking logic and the competition are settled. TechCrunch's framing points the same way, describing Google's move as a response to OpenAI's own connected-apps feature in ChatGPT and Meta's Muse, which means the three biggest AI surfaces are now independently building the same kind of plumbing. A vendor's MCP integration built for one of them is not guaranteed to transfer cleanly to the others.

What to do about it now

Treat this as a scoping exercise before it's a marketing decision. The build is an engineering lift, not a listing you request, so the first useful step is internal: find out whether anything you already expose through an API or an existing MCP server could pass as a qualifying action, and whether the OAuth and console work is small enough to prototype before committing marketing resources to the announcement cycle.

• Ask engineering whether an MCP server already exists for any product surface, even one built for an internal tool or a different AI integration
• Identify one task in your product that a user would plausibly want done without opening your app, and scope what exposing it through AppFunctions or a remote MCP server would take
• Join the waitlist at developers.google.com/connected-apps now if you have a US entity, since Google has given no signal on when broader access opens
• Watch the Connected Console's traffic, latency and error metrics once live, rather than assuming inclusion alone moves the acquisition number

The caution worth building in from day one: this is a public preview with no published timeline, no disclosed approval rate and no case study yet of a smaller vendor getting meaningful traffic out of a Connected App slot. Google's own page, like Adobe's and Peloton's existing presence inside Gemini, shows what the deal-based version of this looked like. What a self-serve queue of unknown size produces for a mid-market SaaS company applying today is genuinely unproven, and that uncertainty is reason to treat this as an experiment with a capped budget, not a rebuilt go-to-market motion.