Tech Giants Unite: Microsoft’s adoption of Google’s Agent2Agent protocol signals a major leap towards interoperable AI, promising a new era of intelligent, collaborative software that spans platforms and ecosystems.
- Cross-Platform Collaboration: Microsoft is integrating Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol into its Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio, enabling AI agents built on different platforms to communicate and work together seamlessly.
- Industry-Wide Interoperability: This move underscores a broader industry trend towards shared AI protocols, aiming to prevent vendor lock-in and foster an open ecosystem where AI agents can operate across various clouds, applications, and organizational boundaries.
- Empowering Developers and Enterprises: The A2A integration will allow developers to build complex, multi-agent workflows, enhancing productivity and enabling sophisticated AI-driven solutions while maintaining robust governance, security, and service-level agreements.
The landscape of artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving, moving beyond standalone applications to interconnected networks of intelligent agents. In a significant stride towards this future, Microsoft has announced its adoption of Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, an open standard designed to facilitate communication and collaboration between AI agents. This strategic decision, unveiled on Wednesday, will see Microsoft integrate A2A support into two of its key AI development platforms: Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. Furthermore, Microsoft has joined the A2A working group on GitHub, signaling a commitment to contribute to the protocol’s development and associated tooling.
This embrace of an open standard championed by a major competitor highlights a growing understanding within the tech industry: the future of AI is collaborative. As Microsoft stated in its announcement, “The best agents won’t live in one app or cloud; they’ll operate in the flow of work, spanning models, domains, and ecosystems.” The A2A protocol, introduced by Google in early April 2024, provides the foundational framework for this vision. It allows AI agents—semi-autonomous programs capable of performing tasks—to exchange goals, invoke actions, and work in concert across disparate clouds, applications, and services. For developers, A2A offers a suite of interoperable components designed to ensure that these collaborations occur securely and efficiently.
The implications of this integration are substantial. Once A2A support is live, AI agents developed using Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio will gain the ability to tap into the capabilities of external agents, even those created with different tools or hosted outside of Microsoft’s ecosystem. A practical example could see a Microsoft-based agent managing a user’s schedule by coordinating with a Google-based agent to draft and send email invitations. This level of interoperability is crucial for enterprises looking to build complex, multi-agent workflows that can span internal systems, partner tools, and production infrastructure, all while maintaining necessary governance and service-level agreements.
Microsoft’s move is not an isolated one but rather aligns with a “broader industry push for shared agent protocols.” This commitment to openness is further evidenced by Microsoft’s previous support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI to data systems, which was also adopted by Google and OpenAI earlier this year. The enterprise appetite for such agentic technology is burgeoning. A recent KPMG survey revealed that 65% of companies are already experimenting with AI agents, and market projections by Markets and Markets estimate the AI agent segment will soar from $7.84 billion in 2025 to an impressive $52.62 billion by 2030.
Over the past year, AI agents have transitioned from experimental novelties to integral components of enterprise systems. Microsoft has witnessed this transformation firsthand, with Azure AI Foundry now utilized by developers at over 70,000 enterprises, including prominent names like Epic, Fujitsu, and LG Electronics. In a mere four months, over 10,000 organizations have adopted Microsoft’s new Agent Service, and Copilot Studio boasts usage by more than 230,000 organizations, including 90% of the Fortune 500. As these AI agents undertake increasingly sophisticated roles, their need to access not only diverse models and tools but also each other becomes paramount. Microsoft envisions Copilot acting as the “UI for AI,” connecting users with networks of agents that can reason, act, and adapt across various boundaries.
The integration of A2A is designed with enterprise needs at its core, particularly security and control. Communication between agents will be structured, allowing for the secure exchange of goals, state management, action invocation, and result delivery, all with observability. Developers can continue using familiar tools like Semantic Kernel or LangChain while benefiting from this enhanced interoperability. Crucially, every interaction will be protected by enterprise-grade safeguards, including Microsoft Entra, mutual TLS, Azure AI Content Safety, and comprehensive audit logs, ensuring that safety, compliance, and accountability remain central as agent ecosystems become more open and distributed.
With A2A support, Azure AI Foundry customers will be empowered to construct intricate multi-agent workflows, Copilot Studio agents will securely invoke external counterparts, and enterprises will gain a clear path towards composable, intelligent systems that transcend organizational and cloud barriers. Microsoft’s contributions are also expected to accelerate the development and adoption of the A2A protocol across the wider industry. This initiative is part of a larger journey, building on innovations like Autogen, Semantic Kernel, and contributions to MCP, as Microsoft continues to evolve its platforms to support the protocols, models, and frameworks most vital to developers and enterprises.
Microsoft views agentic computing not merely as a trend but as a “foundational shift” that will redefine how software is built, decisions are made, and value is created. The public preview of A2A in Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio is anticipated soon. To help developers get started, Microsoft has introduced a new sample in Semantic Kernel (available in Python) demonstrating how two local agents can collaborate using the A2A protocol to plan a travel itinerary and handle currency conversions, showcasing seamless interoperability without requiring custom orchestration code.
By championing A2A and building upon its open orchestration platform, Microsoft is actively laying the groundwork for the next generation of software—one that is inherently collaborative, observable, and adaptive. The core belief is that intelligence should not be siloed; it should work across boundaries, mirroring the interconnected world it aims to serve. This collaborative step with Google is a testament to that vision, promising a more integrated and powerful AI-driven future.