# Google Cloud Next 25 brings A2A and conversational analytics in preview

> At Next 25, Google announced the Agent2Agent protocol as a draft open standard and put conversational analytics for Looker and a new API into preview, both grounded in the Looker semantic model.

By Brandon Gross. Published April 11, 2025.  
Tags: google cloud, data agents, standards.  
Canonical: https://kenseme.com/blog/google-next-2025-a2a-conversational-analytics/

Google Cloud Next ran this week in Las Vegas. Two of its announcements bear directly on agents over business data.

## Agent2Agent, a draft protocol

Google announced Agent2Agent (A2A), an open protocol for agents to find each other and hand off work. It launched as a draft specification with more than 50 partners, and Google positioned it as a complement to MCP: MCP connects an agent to tools and data, and A2A connects agents to other agents. Google said a production version is planned for later this year.

## Conversational analytics, in preview

1. **Looker conversational analytics** lets people ask questions of their Looker data in plain language. It is in preview.
2. **The Conversational Analytics API**, also in preview, lets developers build the same kind of question answering into their own apps.
3. **BigQuery knowledge engine**, in preview, uses Gemini to read schema relationships and query history, then generates metadata and suggests business glossary terms.
4. **MCP Toolbox for Databases** launched, and Google's Agent Development Kit supports MCP.

## Why it matters

Google grounds these answers in the Looker semantic model, the place where a company has already written down what its measures mean. That is the right instinct. A model that guesses what "revenue" means from column names will guess differently than your finance team does.

The open question for most companies is the part a semantic model does not cover. It defines measures and joins. It does not usually say what a customer is, which events change a customer's status, or which team's definition wins when two disagree. Agents will need that too.

## Sources

1. [A2A: a new era of agent interoperability (Google Developers Blog)](https://developers.googleblog.com/en/a2a-a-new-era-of-agent-interoperability/)
2. [Google Cloud Next 25 wrap-up](https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/google-cloud-next/google-cloud-next-2025-wrap-up)