Google Cloud used its Gemini at Work 2026 conference to announce the Gemini agent, a single universal agent for work that the company says can answer questions, handle knowledge work, create images and media, and write and run code from one prompt box. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian framed the shift as moving from asking questions to delegating outcomes: you give it objectives, not instructions.
The agent works inline across Gmail, Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Chat and Calendar, carrying the same memory, skills and permission controls into each. It is also reachable from the web, iOS and Android apps, Windows and Mac desktops, the command line, Microsoft 365 and Slack, plus a headless API for third-party applications - Google's clearest acknowledgment yet that enterprise work does not happen only inside Google's own apps.
Execution is persistent and cloud-hosted. A single set of memories, context and a personalization graph follows the agent across devices, so work that takes hours or days keeps running after an employee closes their laptop and is still there when they come back. For larger jobs, Gemini dynamically spins up temporary sub-agents with their own identities to run steps in parallel or sequence, and teams can define standing "coworker agents" that get their own @agents.company.com email address, persistent storage and strictly scoped access to company context.
Under the hood, the agent routes each task to the model it judges best for the job, and that pool is not limited to Google's own: it includes Anthropic's Claude models today, with support for additional closed and open models planned. Google is also shipping plain-language data and analytics skills on top of BigQuery, and industry-specific tooling, skills and connectors for financial services and legal teams.
The governance layer is pitched as the enterprise differentiator: identity and policy management, authorization and permission controls, secure sandboxing and network gateways, alongside cost controls built on multi-model orchestration, Smart Routing and real-time spend caps. Google says nearly 80% of its cloud customers now use its AI products, almost 90% of the Fortune 100 use Gemini Enterprise, and nearly 500 customers each processed more than a trillion tokens over the past year.
Early testers reportedly include Shopify and PayPal, and Google says Gemini itself counts more than a billion monthly active users. The launch lands in the same week as a near-identical push from Microsoft - persistent agents, OS-level execution containers and Copilot's own coworker roles - and, from Anthropic, embedded workspace artifacts. The universal work agent has officially become the category everyone is shipping.
Comments (0)
Log in to join the discussion
Log InNo comments yet