Google finally builds the AI and agent platform it’s been describing for years

At Cloud Next '26, Google announced a major restructuring of its enterprise AI offerings. Vertex AI is now rebranded as the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, with Gemini Enterprise as the umbrella brand for all enterprise AI. Key new components include Agent Studio (GA low-code agent builder), Agent Simulation for stress-testing agents with synthetic multi-step scenarios, Agent Registry for governed catalogs, Agent Marketplace with prebuilt partner agents, and Universal Context/Knowledge Catalog for semantic reasoning over enterprise data. Critically, every Google Cloud and Workspace service is now accessible via Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), making it the connective tissue of the platform. The Gemini Enterprise web app brings these capabilities to non-developers. The author notes that while the agent platform category is commoditizing across hyperscalers, Google's deep integration with Workspace data (Gmail, Docs, Drive) and its TPU infrastructure may be its strongest differentiators.