Google A2A Protocol: open standard for communication between heterogeneous AI agents
In one sentence Google announces A2A (Agent-to-Agent) Protocol with 50+ partners, an open standard for communication between AI agents from different vendors, complementary to MCP for interoperability in the agent ecosystem.
A2A (Agent-to-Agent) is a protocol proposed by Google to allow AI agents built with different technologies to communicate with each other in a standardized way. Without a common standard, an agent built with LangChain doesn't know how to talk to one built with AutoGen or Salesforce's proprietary system.
A2A defines how an agent presents itself (its capabilities, the tasks it can handle), how it receives requests, how it responds, and how it notifies progress. It is designed to work alongside MCP (Anthropic's Model Context Protocol), not in competition: MCP handles how the agent accesses tools, A2A handles how agents talk to each other.
At launch it has 50+ partners including Atlassian, SAP, Salesforce, ServiceNow, signaling a push toward enterprise adoption.
Companies
Google, Atlassian, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow
Tools
A2A Protocol, Google ADK, MCP
Tags
Sources