Google's Gemini Agent: My Breakdown and 3 Questions to Ask First
What Google's new agent actually does, how Claude fits inside it, and the three questions I'd ask before moving any part of a business onto it.
Back to all free guidesSo in the reel I went through Google's new Gemini agent, and the bit that got me is that it runs Claude. Here's the full breakdown of what it does, then the three questions I'd ask before moving any part of my business onto it, or onto anyone else's platform.
What it is
Google Cloud announced the Gemini agent at Gemini at Work on 8 October. It's one agent inside the Gemini Enterprise app that answers questions, does knowledge work and writes and runs code. You can use it from the web, your phone, Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack or the command line.
It's in private preview right now. Google says wider access is coming for Workspace customers on some Business and Enterprise plans, with no date or price yet.
1. Claude runs inside it
Google's line is that the agent and the model underneath it are separate choices. Since 15 October an admin can turn on Claude Opus 5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 right next to Gemini.
- Where: the Enable third-party models section of the Feature Management tab. People then pick the model in the model selector.
- Cost and regions: it's off by default and billed pay as you go on your Cloud Billing account (overages have to be switched on first), and Claude runs in the global location and the US and EU multi-regions.
2. Long jobs keep going
It runs in the cloud and keeps four kinds of memory: the task in front of it, a knowledge base it builds from your documents, how each job gets done, and everything it has done before.
So a job that takes hours or days keeps running after you close your laptop, and it's still there when you come back.
3. Coworker agents
Describe the role you need and Gemini creates a coworker agent. It gets its own Workspace account, with an email address on agents.yourcompany.com, a calendar, Drive and a place in your company directory.
Your team works with it the way they'd work with anyone else, by adding it to a Chat space or tagging it in a doc comment. It only sees what you share with it.
4. Spend caps per project
In the Cloud Billing Console you set a hard limit on a project's AI spend. When a project hits it, that project's agent pauses, and you resume it with one click.
Claude usage counts towards the same cap. Because the tracking is per project, you can charge AI costs back to each department.
The 3 questions I'd ask before moving onto it
All of that is genuinely useful. But it all lives on Google's platform, so the lock-in moves from the model to the platform. That's why I built my own operating system with Claude Code: one app for my content, my DMs and my CRM.
Before you move onto Google's agent, or anyone else's, I'd ask these three:
- Can you take your data and your automations with you if you leave? Check whether your workflows, memories and agent setups export in a form you can actually use somewhere else.
- Who pays when the model underneath gets more expensive? With pay-as-you-go models, a price change lands on your bill straight away. Spend caps stop the surprise, but they also stop the work.
- What happens to your setup if they change the rules? Features in preview can change shape, move plans or get priced differently once they launch properly.
Run the check on your own setup
Paste this into Claude and fill in the last three lines. It works through the three questions for your business and tells you what to keep under your own control.
I'm thinking about moving part of my business onto an AI agent platform. Work through three questions with me, one at a time, and be specific to my business:
1. Can I take my data and my automations with me if I leave? List what would be stuck and what would export cleanly.
2. Who pays when the model underneath gets more expensive? Estimate my monthly usage from what I describe, and show me what a price rise would do to it.
3. What happens to my setup if the platform changes its rules? Name the parts of my business that would stop working.
Then give me a short plan: what I should run on the platform, what I should keep in tools I own, and the first step to take.
Platform:
What I'd move onto it:
What my business does:Where to read more
Google's own launch post has the full detail. Search for Gemini at Work 2026 on the Google Cloud Blog.