Google has announced the launch of Agent2Agent (A2A), an open protocol designed to facilitate seamless communication between AI agents across different vendor ecosystems. Unveiled at the company's annual Cloud Next conference, A2A promises to automate complex workflows, increase productivity, and reduce integration costs for businesses.

The A2A protocol addresses a significant challenge in the AI landscape, where agents built on different vendor ecosystems often struggle to communicate with each other. By enabling agents to publish their capabilities and negotiate interactions with users, A2A facilitates secure and efficient collaboration between agents. According to Saurabh Tiwary, vice president of Cloud AI at Google, A2A allows agents to work together seamlessly, regardless of their underlying ecosystems.

The protocol is built on top of existing standards such as HTTP, SSE, and JSON-RPC, making it easier for businesses to integrate A2A with their existing IT stacks. This approach has been praised by industry experts, who believe it will simplify implementation and increase adoption rates. "Using HTTP and JSON-RPC is practical and should make implementation easier," said Anil Clifford, founder of IT services and consulting firm Eden Digital.

However, Clifford also expressed concerns about the protocol's ability to handle edge cases in real-world scenarios, which he believes will ultimately determine A2A's success. Despite these concerns, Google has already partnered with over 50 major vendors, including SAP, LangChain, MongoDB, Workday, Box, Deloitte, Elastic, Salesforce, ServiceNow, UiPath, UKG, and Weights & Biases, to proliferate the protocol.

A2A facilitates communication between a "client" agent and a "remote" agent, enabling them to collaborate on tasks and share information. The protocol includes several key capabilities, such as capability discovery, task management, collaboration, and user experience negotiation. These features allow agents to identify the best agent for a task, manage complex workflows, and negotiate the correct format for responding to user requests.

A2A is distinct from other protocols, such as Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), which focuses on the interaction between applications and generative AI models. While MCP provides vertical integration, A2A enables horizontal integration between agents. According to Paul Chada, co-founder of DoozerAI, A2A could potentially complement MCP, allowing agents built using MCP to communicate with other agents using A2A.

Industry analysts believe that A2A has the potential to become a new industry standard, with major cloud providers like Microsoft and Amazon potentially adopting the protocol in the future. However, some experts also predict that competing standards may emerge, potentially causing fragmentation and headaches for early adopters. As the AI landscape continues to evolve, it remains to be seen how A2A will shape the future of AI workflows and collaboration.