Current problem: Your Bots Can’t Talk!
AI agents is THE tech developer paradigm for the upcoming years.
And they are popping up everywhere, empowered by a constantly (or seemingly so) LLM empowerment and audio-visual avatarization. And enterprises are the biggest users here. Specialized bots designed to automate tasks, assist employees, and streamline workflows are all the craze. More bots, more efficiency right? (*cough, cough* And less money spent on human workers, too).
Except… they’re mostly stuck in their own little worlds. 🏰
Your HR bot probably has no clue how to talk to the IT support bot. Your sales agent can’t easily sync with the supply chain agent. It’s like a team meeting where everyone speaks a different language and just stares blankly.
Enter Google A2A: The Universal Translator (Maybe?)
Google Cloud, along with a massive posse of over 50 tech buddies (think Salesforce, SAP, Atlassian, LangChain, ServiceNow, Box… plus all the big consulting suits like Accenture, Deloitte, McKinsey…), dropped a potential fix.
It’s called the Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol.
The Big Idea? An open rulebook so AI agents, no matter who built them or what fancy framework they use, can actually talk to each other, share info securely, and coordinate tasks. Like agreeing on a common language so they can finally collaborate instead of bumping into walls.
Importantly, Google didn’t do this alone. They roped in everyone. The list is really huge. Does that mean it’s guaranteed to succeed in wide scale adoption? Nope. But a lot of important companies are at least betting on it!
Principles
Lets Agents Be Agents: It doesn’t dumb them down to simple “tools.” Let them chat and figure things out, even if they don’t share the same brain.
Uses Existing Standards: Built on boring (but reliable!) web standards like HTTP and JSON-RPC. No reinventing the wheel, so easier to plug into existing tech stacks.
Secure by Default: Designed for grown-up enterprise needs (authentication, authorization…).
Support Long-Running Tasks: Works for quick jobs and stuff that takes hours or days (like deep research, or waiting for a human to approve something). It can supposedly give updates along the way.
More Than Just Text: Agents deal with images, audio, video, right? A2A aims to handle all that, not just boring text messages.
How It Actually Works (Simplified)
Google’s A2A protocol defines interactions between a “client” agent initiating a task and a “remote” agent performing it:
- Discovery: Agents publish their capabilities via an “Agent Card” (JSON format), allowing client agents to find suitable remote agents for a specific task.
- Task Management: Communication centers around a “task” object with a defined lifecycle. Agents coordinate to complete the task, which might involve multiple steps or take significant time. The result is termed an “artifact.”
- Collaboration: Agents exchange messages containing context, replies, artifacts, or instructions.
- User Experience Negotiation: Agents can specify content types (text, image, video) and negotiate based on the client’s UI capabilities (e.g., can it display an iframe or handle a web form?).
CLICK on the video presentation below to see it in action.
The Future: Open Source Utopia or Vaporware?
Google promises a “production-ready” version later this year (2025). However, questions remain:
- Will everyone actually use it, or will we get 5 competing “standards”?
- How truly “open” will it stay?
- Will it handle real-world messiness or just simple demo cases?
Verdict? Jury’s out. We still have room to see if this is the protocol messiah or just another power move to secure space.
