Microsoft says Google is using the recently launched open protocol to allow AI “agents” to communicate with each other.
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it would bring support for Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) specification to two AI development platforms: Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. Microsoft is also participating in GitHub’s A2A working group to contribute to the protocols and tools.
“By supporting A2A and building on an open orchestration platform, we lay the foundation for next-generation software. This is collaborative, observable, and adaptive by design,” the company wrote in a blog post. “The best agents don’t live in one app or the cloud. They work in a workflow that spans models, domains, and ecosystems.”
Announced by Google in early April, A2A will enable agents, a semi-autonomous program powered by AI, to collaborate on a variety of clouds, apps and services. Using the protocol, agents can exchange goals and invoke actions. The developer gets a set of interoperable components that can be used to ensure that agent collaboration occurs safely.
Once A2A support for Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio arrives, agents built using the platform can tap external agents for tasks, such as agents created with other tools or agents hosted outside of Microsoft. For example, Microsoft agents can schedule meetings while Google agents draft email invitations.
“(c)Ustomers can build complex multi-agent workflows across internal (agents), partner tools, and production infrastructure, while maintaining governance and service-level contracts,” the company explained in a blog post. “We are in line with the shared agent protocols driving a wider industry.”
Agent technology is not perfect, but investment is growing as companies try to adopt it to increase productivity. According to a recent KPMG survey, 65% of companies are experimenting with AI agents. Markets and markets project the AI Agent segment will increase from $7.84 billion in 2025 to $52.62 billion by 2030.
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Microsoft’s decision to throw weight behind A2A comes after the company introduced support for MCP, the human standard for connecting AI to systems where data resides in Copilot Studio. Other major AI model providers, including Google and Openai, announced earlier this year that they would adopt MCP.