Google's A2A Joins AAIF in Agent Economy Consolidation

Google has transferred its A2A protocol to the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), bringing two major open standards for agent communication and tool integration under a single governance umbrella.

The move, announced on August 20, 2026, places Google's A2A alongside Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) in the AAIF. This consolidation brings together the dominant protocols for horizontal and vertical integration in the agent economy.

A2A handles the negotiation of tasks, exchange of identity credentials, and state maintenance across organizational boundaries between agents, while MCP focuses on integrating tools with models at a local level.