Google Expands Gemini Managed Agents API with Background Tasks and Remote MCP

Google has announced significant expansions to its Managed Agents feature in the Gemini API, adding support for background task execution, remote Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections, and additional agent orchestration capabilities. Background tasks allow agents to run asynchronously without holding an open connection, which is critical for long-running workflows in production environments. Remote MCP support means agents can now connect to external tool servers over the network rather than requiring local process management, dramatically broadening what tools an agent can access. For developers building agentic pipelines, this removes a major architectural constraint — you no longer need to proxy everything through a single synchronous session. This is one of the more substantive agentic infrastructure updates from Google this year and directly competes with OpenAI's Assistants and Anthropic's tool-use patterns.