Gemini Agent: Google Gives AI Its Own Workspace Account

Google Cloud announced the Gemini agent on October 8, 2026: a single AI agent for work that answers questions, runs tasks lasting hours or days and writes code, and that can act inside Gmail, Drive, Docs and Chat under its own account. Thomas Kurian unveiled it at the Gemini at Work 2026 event. There is no date and no price yet.

What we know

  • Who and when: Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, on October 8, 2026. The Google Cloud blog published an adaptation of his keynote.
  • What it is: Google calls it a "universal agent for work": one agent and one API for questions, knowledge work, images and code.
  • Where it runs: web, iOS and Android, Windows and Mac desktops, the command line, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Slack, according to the announcement.
  • Long tasks: it runs in the cloud. Google says work that takes hours or days keeps going after you close your laptop.
  • Coworker agents: you can create an agent with a fixed role inside a team. In Workspace it gets its own account: email address, calendar, Drive and a place in the company directory.
  • What it sees: the announcement states that a coworker agent acts under its own identity, not yours, and sees only what is shared with it. Access follows the sharing and group membership the team already uses.
  • Models: it picks a model for each job from Google's Gemini family and Anthropic's Claude models. Google promises more later.
  • Connections: Confluence, Microsoft Office, Teams, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, BigQuery and Postgres, among others, plus any MCP server.
  • Industries: the Financial Services and Legal versions are in preview. Government, Healthcare and Retail are "coming soon".
  • Spend: you can set a hard cap per project in the Cloud Billing Console. When it is hit, that project's agent pauses.
  • Google's numbers: nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 use Gemini Enterprise and nearly 80% of Google Cloud customers use its AI products. These are the company's own figures.
  • What is not stated: availability date, price, which Workspace editions include it, languages or countries. VentureBeat notes Google has not specified how customers activate the agent or how its account is licensed.

What changes and what doesn't

Who signs the work changes. Until now the assistant acted as you. A coworker agent has a name, an email address and its own trail: Google says its edits appear under its own name in a document's version history.

Duration changes. This is no longer one answer in a chat window but an assignment that keeps running on its own.

There is nothing a small business can switch on today because of this announcement. The examples are banks, telecom operators and large retailers. Google mentions small and midsize businesses already using Gemini Enterprise, without saying which plan the new agent requires.

Responsibility does not change. Whatever an agent sends from your domain, your company sent.

And "sees only what you share" is only as good as your permissions. If half the company can open everything, so can the agent that joins that group. That is this article's reading, not a statement from Google.

How to prepare if your company runs on Google Workspace

  1. Review what is shared with the whole organization or with "anyone with the link". Start with the folders for payroll, contracts and customer data: open "Share" on each one and see who has access.
  2. Tidy up groups and Chat spaces. Who is in each one, and why. According to Google, an agent's access follows those groups and what is shared in them.
  3. Decide what an agent never touches. Google frames four questions: who the agent is, what it may do, what it did and what it should never touch. Answer them in writing before you test anything.
  4. Start with work you can review. A draft, a summary, an internal report. No replies to customers without a person reading them first.
  5. Set a spend cap from day one, once it is available to you. An agent that works for days also bills for days.
  6. Ask whoever sells you Workspace: which edition includes it, whether an agent's account needs a paid license, which languages it handles and where you can see the log of what it did.
  7. If you use Microsoft 365 or Slack, the announcement says the agent works from there too. The same questions apply.

Related: Personal Agent Protocol: What It Means for Your Website

Sources

Updates: if Google publishes the date, the price or the Workspace editions that include the agent, it will be noted here with a link.