Google now lets any business submit an MCP-based app to Gemini and Search. Treat it like early SEO for your clients' services

Customers may soon book, order or check status inside Gemini without ever opening your client's website.

What happened

Google opened a preview of its Connected Apps Platform, which lets any business or developer submit an app that users can use from Google Search, the Gemini app, or both. Until now, connected apps came from selected partners. Google says more than 50 are live in Gemini, including Adobe, Experian and Peloton, and those will come to Search over the next few weeks.

To build one, developers connect a cloud-hosted MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, or Android MCP using the AppFunctions APIs, then register, test and submit the app in the Google Connected Console. Once live, developers can track traffic, latency and error rates and keep control of verified logos and authenticated accounts.

The preview is a beta for US developers who join a waitlist. Google did not say when it opens more widely. It was announced alongside Android Dev Summit updates, including AppFunctions moving to beta as a shared tool-calling layer for agents.

My take

TechCrunch compares this to the early days of SEO, and I think that is the right frame. Whoever exposes clean actions to the assistant gets used. Whoever only has a web page gets summarized.

For service businesses this is not about building a big app. It is about deciding which three or four actions a customer would want an assistant to do for them:

• Check availability and book a slot
• Get a quote from a few inputs
• Look up an order or ticket status
• Join a waitlist

Each of those is already an automation behind the scenes, usually a CRM plus a calendar plus some rules. An MCP server is a thin, well-described front door to that same logic. The hard part is the backend being reliable enough to answer a stranger's agent at 3 AM.

My clients outside the US cannot submit yet. That is fine. The useful work now is getting those actions clean, documented and tested, so the listing is a small step when access opens.