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Google to embrace MCP
- omneity 2y agoI hope they also improve their JSONSchema support for structured output and tool calling. Currently it has many limitations compared to OpenAI’s, for example it doesn’t support “additionalProperties” which eliminates an entire class of use cases and makes it immediately incompatible with many MCP servers. Marketing the API as OpenAI-compatible and then me getting 400s when I switch to Gemini leaves a sour taste in the mouth, and doesn’t make me confident about their MCP support.
- jeswin 2y agoGiven their anti-trust struggles, if Google for some reason dominates AI, they'd not want people to bring up anti-competitive behavior as a reason for that. Adopting open standards, especially open standards conceived outside Google is good for everyone including Google. They're well placed - from research to hardware to software and data. They'll also want the industry to rapidly move forward and connect data to AI. MCP has momemtum.
- phh 2y agoTo escape the anti-trust struggles, they'll need to provide MCP servers (meaning provide callable tools). Stopping at providing MCP client (the chatbot that connects to MCP servers) isn't enough. I'll believe in Google not actively being anti-competitive when I (a paying customer) can access/modify my gmail, google contacts, google sheets, plan routes in google maps, ... from my local llm chatbot using mcp.
- Tyr42 2y agoI mean, people already have MCP wrappers around the Gmail API.
- skybrian 2y agoIt’s terribly insecure as-is [1]. But so was HTTP. The spec isn’t final, so hopefully it will improve. [1] https://blog.sshh.io/p/everything-wrong-with-mcp https://blog.sshh.io/p/everything-wrong-with-mcp
- dheera 2y ago> MCP initially didn’t define an auth spec and now that they have people don’t like it. Just wrap it in an SSH tunnel or a HTTPS websocket > MCP servers can run (malicious code) locally. Just run it in a Docker container
- Sayrus 2y ago> Just run it in a Docker container You should probably read the original article in the footnotes of OP's article: https://equixly.com/blog/2025/03/29/mcp-server-new-security-nightmare/ https://equixly.com/blog/2025/03/29/mcp-server-new-security-... While a container will surely protect you from those, it will also prevent you using the features implemented by those MCP Servers.
- Havoc 2y agoContainers are usually considered pretty weak security at best. Especially since you don’t always control what the user does with it (docker va rootless podman etc)
- senko 2y ago>> MCP initially didn’t define an auth spec and now that they have people don’t like it. > Just wrap it in an SSH tunnel or a HTTPS websocket I assume this is sarcasm, but if not (and for people that take it at face value), it fundamentally misunderstands what auth is used for.
- oezi 2y agoDoes MCP solve authentication on user's behalf which stifled OpenAI's GPTs? Tools often need access to data sources but I don't want to hard code passwords.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- evantahler 2y agocheck out arcade.dev for this!
- skeeter2020 2y agoit depends if you're using stdio or http. the former gets credentials from the environment and the latter oauth.
- flakiness 2y agoI hope Gemini gets a desktop app where MCP servers are more useful, but wonder if Google's security posture allows it.
- phildougherty 2y agointerested to see if Agent-to-Agent protocol duplicates the MCP functionality eventually
- skeeter2020 2y agoI guess they could both expand into the other's current domain, but right now they're solving pretty different problems.
- behnamoh 2y agoWell, Google is one of the major investors in Anthropic, so I'm not surprised.
- edandersen 2y agoAre they going to release a Gemini desktop app with MCP support so normal people can use it?
- mellosouls 2y agoRelated, discussion on A2A from the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43631381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43631381 "The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)", 279 comments
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lawrenceyan 2y agoIt doesn't really matter what it is as there are many equally good implementations, but whoever sets up the framework first and cements usage is likely to guarantee dominance for the foreseeable future. Probably into AGI and post. Model Context Protocol seems good enough to me.
- arresin 2y agoThe idea behind smolagents is better.
- vineyardmike 2y agoI agree the idea seems much better - and I think it's what a lot of big-shops are doing internally too. An earlier article [1] showed that internally, gemini has a python sandbox it uses to call other google services. I'm guessing the main limitation is that it's harder to orchestrate, especially on clients. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43508418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43508418
- lovich 2y agoIs there a good place to read on what the benefit of MCP is? I'm behind the curve on this agentic AI shit and am not quite sure where to look
- marviel 2y agosearch on HN for MCP, limit to last week -- there are a few articles there
- skeeter2020 2y agoI'd start with the source and see if you think there's any benefits: https://modelcontextprotocol.io https://modelcontextprotocol.io
- tuyguntn 2y agoDidn't Google introduce A2A just few days ago? Why Google itself is not heavily invested in their protocol? Smells like a new project in Killed By Google graveyard.
- refulgentis 2y agoThey did. We're observing a response to takes that A2A meant they weren't going to support MCP. Everyone's got a take and a response these days, it's a nice little infinite loop of complaints and that keeps PR kicking.
- danpalmer 2y agoA2A - "Agent to Agent", MCP - "Model Context Protocol", they're different things solving different problems.
- refulgentis 2y agoNo
- Animats 2y agoLooks similar to most other mid-level remote procedure call protocols, from XMLRPC to CORBA. The usual sync, async, poll, progress test problems apply. Things I'd expected to see and didn't: - Client to server: "tell me what you can do". This has always been hard, but in the LLM era, it could potentially work, because a textural response would work. - Similarly, being able to ask "How do I..." might be feasible now. It should be possible to talk to a new server and automatically figure out how to use it. - "How much is this going to cost me?" Plus some way to set a cost limit on a query.
- Spivak 2y agoThe first one is included, you can ask for available actions as well as mcp sever feature support. Is there something else that's missing?
- mgraczyk 2y agocost isn't part of MCP in the same way that cost isn't part of HTTP. It wouldn't really make sense to include that in the protocol, just put it in the application layer on top.
- boleary-gl 2y agoEspecially since the cost in some (most?) cases won’t be from the MCP server but from the LLM using it
- hansvm 2y agoIt's a little different. These are systems which are explicitly able to achieve better or worse outcomes by tuning the cost, in ways that aren't especially configurable otherwise. For an HTTP API, you can read the docs and use the small image vs large image endpoint or whatever and have a clear idea of what you're getting and for what cost. For LLMs, it would be very nice to be able to communicate about the desired and actual cost breakdowns for each sub-action.
- mgraczyk 2y ago
- stevenalowe 2y agoMaster Control Program?
- cwilby 2y agoIt's 2025's ROT13 cipher for API. /s It's also "Model Context Protocol", a protocol for LLMs to interact with third-party services.
- smcnally 2y agoThe ROT13 cipher for API is NVK. NVidia Knows
- stevenalowe 2y agoisn't that exactly how the Master Control Program started?
- ChoHag 2y ago[dead]
- curtisszmania 2y ago[dead]
- pgt 2y agoGoogle owns 14% of Anthropic, author of MCP.
- karmasimida 2y agoNo public information whether Google's investment in Anthropic leads to voting power though.
- boleary-gl 2y agoI think we can assume even if it is any voting power, it’s far less than 14%. No startup growing like that would give up shares with the same voting rights as the founders
- bluSCALE4 2y agoAnyone else wish Google would just stay away from MCP? They manage to ruin everything.
- sph 2y agoI hate to say it but Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Phase one is adopting it (you are here). Phase two is somehow turning it into a Web standard deeply integrated with Chrome which they have no real competition from and takes billions of dollars just to stay apace with. Not sure about Extinguish to be honest, Google just wants the monopoly and they already have it.
- rbanffy 2y agoEvery time I see MCP I think of the Unisys mainframe OS. It runs on x86 processors (under emulation), so it'd make some sense if Google offered it as an option in Google Cloud. Maybe they could offer OS2000, GCOS, and GECOS as well.
- goosedragons 2y agoMeanwhile I think Tron...
- bonoboTP 2y agoI think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacarpophalangeal_joint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacarpophalangeal_joint
- jappgar 2y agoI'm kind glad that the industry is distracted by vibe-coding, "tools" and MCP. It's so clearly a dead-end. It gives freethinking developers and innovators time to focus on the next generation of software.
- willemlaurentz 2y agoSpot on. Decided to get myself a ThreeJS book instead of vibing my way through. Wrote this post on it: https://willem.com/blog/2025-04-15_vibe-coding/ https://willem.com/blog/2025-04-15_vibe-coding/
- noisy_boy 2y agoThey have a chance to come-up with a user-friendly framework on top of MCP and make a big difference in acceleration of adoption. Cherry on the cake would be if they can build a UI on top of it to build/monitor/visualize. Hosted by them with a generous free-tier i.e. more private data to munch on for ads (only half joking).
- whalesalad 2y agoit's wild to me how rapidly this has exploded in popularity. there's even a twitter account/site dedicated to news updates - https://x.com/getMCPilled https://x.com/getMCPilled and mcpilled.com