Google Cloud Unveils Gemini Agent That Works as a Coworker

The shift from prompt-response to goal-oriented, persistent agents matters less for the model than for the org chart: an agent with an inbox and calendar is a participant in workflows, not a tool, which forces questions about access, audit trails and accountability that existing SaaS permissioning was never built for. Google Cloud's framing also signals where the competition is heading — agent identity and long-running task execution as the product, not raw model quality. Whether enterprises actually grant an autonomous agent standing access to internal systems, and how vendors handle the resulting governance gap, is the open question.