Google's Enterprise Agent Play

Google used its Cloud Next conference on April 22 to tell customers that AI agents — software that carries out tasks for workers — are now central to how the company plans to make money from artificial intelligence. (reuters.com) At the Las Vegas event, Google pitched a “Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform” and said companies will need more than a chatbot: they will need tools to build, connect, govern, and deploy agents across business systems. Google’s own Cloud Next recap called the “agentic enterprise” the future of every organization. (blog.google) Google paired that software pitch with infrastructure deals. Reuters reported that the company highlighted multibillion-dollar commitments, including work with startup Thinking Machines and a new Merck partnership announced at the conference. (reuters.com) Merck said on April 22 that the agreement is a multi-year investment valued at up to $1 billion, with Google Cloud technology slated for research, manufacturing, and corporate functions. The companies said the plan includes Gemini-based agents and data systems across Merck’s operations. (merck.com) Thinking Machines, the startup led by former OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati, said it will use Google Cloud for part of its model training and inference work. SiliconANGLE reported that the deployment includes Google Cloud A4X Max instances built around Nvidia Blackwell Ultra graphics processors. (siliconangle.com) The sales pitch is broader than model access. Reuters reported that Google is also selling orchestration software — the layer that routes tasks between systems — and tools that capture how employees do their work so companies can turn those steps into repeatable automated workflows. (reuters.com) Google has spent the past year building that stack. In April 2025, it introduced Agent2Agent, or A2A, an open protocol meant to let agents from different vendors communicate, and in an update published in 2025 it said the protocol was moving to version 0.3 with tools to build, evaluate, and sell connected agents. (developers.googleblog.com, cloud.google.com) That puts Google into a crowded enterprise market. Bloomberg reported that the new agent tools are aimed at customers weighing offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic, while Google is also leaning on consulting firms and software partners to get its systems into large companies. (bloomberg.com, reuters.com) Google and ServiceNow used Cloud Next to show that partner strategy in practice, announcing integrations so their agents can work across customer service, information technology, and employee workflows. ServiceNow said the goal is “autonomous enterprise operations,” language that matches Google’s push to sell not just models but the operating layer around them. (newsroom.servicenow.com) The bet is that enterprise customers will spend on the full package: chips, cloud capacity, models, workflow software, and outside help to wire it all together. Google’s message in Las Vegas was that agents are no longer a feature inside the cloud business; they are becoming the product. (reuters.com, blog.google)