Google's Gemini AI and Search integrate with third-party apps, expanding functionality for users.

Editorial illustration for Google Opens Gemini and Search to Third-Party Apps

Google Opens Gemini and Search to Third-Party Apps

By AI Daily Post Edited by Brian Petersen, Editor-in-Chief

October 28, 2026 • 3 min read

Google is giving outside developers a formal way into Gemini and Search with the launch of its Connected Apps Platform, now in beta for developers in the U.S. The feature itself isn't new. Google introduced connected apps in Gemini and Search earlier this year, letting users link services like Canva or YouTube Music and then act on them directly, designing a flyer or building a playlist without leaving the AI interface.

What's changing is who gets to build these connections. Instead of Google hand-picking partners, any business or developer can now submit their own app, test it, and track how it performs inside Google's ecosystem.

The move puts Google alongside OpenAI's ChatGPT and Meta's Muse in a broader push to turn AI assistants into the main entry point for everyday app use, rather than a layer sitting on top of it. For that bet to pay off, the selection of connected apps has to be wide enough to keep people from just opening the app themselves. Google's answer is scale: open the submission process up, get as many developers in as possible, and let the catalog grow from there.

Google’s idea is to open its doors to any business or developer that wants to reach users through Search or Gemini by allowing them to submit their own connected apps and monitor their performance.

As AI agents reshape the web, Google opens Gemini and Search to more apps - TechCrunch AI

Why this matters

For developers and founders, Connected Apps Platform is Google telling you where it wants the next layer of distribution to live: inside Gemini and Search, not inside your own app shell. That's a real opportunity if you run a service like Canva or YouTube Music, since you get a shot at being the default action a user takes without them ever opening your app. But it's also a dependency question.

Google decides which integrations get surfaced, how prominently, and under what terms, which means your product's reach inside this layer is rented, not owned. We'd watch adoption numbers closely before treating this as settled infrastructure. A "wide" roster of partners, as Google frames it, still needs users to actually choose agent-mediated tasks over the apps they already know.

Past consumer AI integrations have struggled to prove that behavior shift sticks. The platform is worth building for, but founders should hedge against Google changing the rules once it sees what the traffic data looks like.