Google Just Built the Infrastructure for AI Agents to Act. The Zero-Sum Moment Is Here.
By Jason Barnard
I started in SEO in 1998 - the year Google was incorporated. For over 27 years, I’ve tracked how algorithms serve users and what brands must do to remain visible and chosen.
The trajectory has been clear: from Search Engines to Answer Engines to AI Assistive Engines. Each shift represented a fundamental change - and each demanded a new optimization approach.
In 2017, I coined “Answer Engine Optimization” (AEO) to describe the shift from ranking in a list of links to being THE answer an AI provides. That framework served the industry through the rise of voice search, featured snippets, and conversational AI.
But I knew another shift was coming. The final evolution: from recommendation to action.
In September 2025, I described the ultimate payoff: “It’s when AI recommends you without being asked.” I painted the picture of Copilot suggesting your name in Excel, Teams highlighting you in meeting summaries, Outlook surfacing your profile as the consultant to hire.
That same month, I introduced the framework for what I call the “Agentic” evolution - AI that doesn’t just recommend, but executes. By November, I was warning on Search Engine Land about the “zero-sum moment” when AI agents would create a winner-take-all dynamic where the trusted default wins everything.
Last week, Google announced official Model Context Protocol (MCP) support across their services.
They just built the infrastructure for AI agents to act autonomously on behalf of users. And they’re calling it “the key to the agentic future.”
The zero-sum moment isn’t approaching. It’s here. Welcome to the era of AI Assistive Agent Optimization.
SEO → AEO → AAO: The Complete Evolution
The progression tells the story:
SEO (1990s-2017): Search Engine Optimization. Be visible in a list of links. Users click, evaluate, and decide. The goal was ranking.
AEO (2017-2025): Answer Engine Optimization. Be THE answer the algorithm provides. Voice assistants, featured snippets, and AI chat interfaces collapse the list into a single response. The goal was being chosen as the definitive answer.
AAO (2025 onwards): AI Assistive Agent Optimization. Be selected when AI takes autonomous action. Agents don’t just answer questions - they execute entire funnels, from awareness to consideration to decision, for each sub-task a user assigns them. The goal is winning invisible, machine-driven transactions.
This is the critical shift: AI Assistive Agents will execute complete workflows autonomously. When a user says “find me a consultant for this project” or “book travel for next week’s meeting,” the agent handles everything. Research. Evaluation. Selection. Execution.
There is no consideration set the user reviews. There is no shortlist. There is one choice, and the agent makes it.
What Google Just Announced
Google’s MCP announcement isn’t about better chatbots. It’s about AI agents that execute.
From their announcement: “For AI to truly be an ‘agent’, to pursue goals and solve real-world problems on behalf of users, it needs more than just intelligence; it needs to reliably work with tools and data.”
MCP - often called “USB-C for AI” - is the standard that connects AI models to actions. Google is now providing fully-managed, enterprise-ready MCP servers across their services:
- Google Maps: Agents can access real-time location data, routing, and place information
- BigQuery: Agents can query and analyze enterprise data directly
- Compute Engine: Agents can provision and manage infrastructure autonomously
- Kubernetes Engine: Agents can diagnose issues, remediate failures, and optimize costs
Read that list again. These aren’t recommendation capabilities. These are execution capabilities.
An AI agent can now book a location for your retail expansion, query your sales data, provision the infrastructure, and manage the deployment - all autonomously.
Google is a founding member of the Agentic AI Foundation. They’re not hedging on this future. They’re building it.
Why AAO Demands Exceptional Clarity
Here’s what makes AI Assistive Agent Optimization fundamentally different from its predecessors: the AI is not just repeating information. It is taking direct, consequential action based on its understanding.
When a search engine ranks you incorrectly, users can still find you. When an answer engine misrepresents you, users can still verify. But when an agent acts on flawed understanding, the transaction is lost before anyone knows it happened.
This requires an exceptionally clear and authoritative Digital Brand Echo - the totality of signals across the web that define how AI perceives your brand.
Your brand needs to be so trusted and well-understood that it wins these invisible, machine-driven transactions. Ambiguity is fatal. Inconsistency is disqualifying. The agent can’t ask clarifying questions. It acts on what it knows.
Why Abstract Authority Isn’t Enough Anymore
Here’s what most marketers will miss: being understood and trusted by AI isn’t sufficient in an agentic world.
Your brand also needs to be actionable.
When Google says agents need “to reliably work with tools and data,” they’re describing a technical requirement that has profound implications for brand strategy.
An AI agent selecting a service provider must be able to:
- Identify your brand as the relevant solution (Understandability)
- Trust your brand as the authoritative choice (Credibility)
- Execute a transaction with your brand (Deliverability in its ultimate form)
That third requirement changes everything.
You can have perfect entity recognition. You can have bulletproof credibility signals. You can be top of algorithmic mind. But if the agent can’t complete a transaction with you - if your systems aren’t accessible, if your APIs aren’t exposed, if your data isn’t structured for agent interaction - you won’t be selected.
The brand that IS actionable wins. Every time. Zero-sum.
The Shift from Informational to Functional
I’ve argued for years that brands must transition from “informational” to “functional” content. MCP support makes this concrete.
Informational content tells AI about you. It builds understanding. It establishes credibility. This work doesn’t stop mattering - it’s the foundation.
Functional content enables AI to act with you. It exposes capabilities. It structures transactions. This is the new requirement.
Think about what Google is doing with their own services. They’re not just describing what BigQuery does - they’re exposing it as a “discoverable tool” that agents can invoke. They’re not just explaining Compute Engine - they’re providing “autonomous infrastructure management” capabilities.
Your brand needs the same evolution. Not just content that describes your services, but structured data and accessible interfaces that enable agents to select and execute.
What Changes Now
Your APIs become brand assets. The interfaces through which agents can interact with your services are now competitive differentiators. If an agent can seamlessly book with your competitor but has friction booking with you, you lose. Period.
Structured data isn’t optional. Schema markup, entity definition, and machine-readable content aren’t just SEO tactics anymore. They’re the language agents use to identify actionable options. Ambiguity means exclusion.
Transaction accessibility compounds. Every friction point in your digital infrastructure is now a competitive disadvantage. The brands that win in an agentic world are the ones agents can work with most reliably.
The foundation still matters - but it’s not enough. Understandability and Credibility remain prerequisites. The AI can’t select what it doesn’t understand or trust. But now there’s a third gate: Can the agent actually execute with you?
The Agentic Timeline Is Accelerating
Google’s announcement includes their roadmap: Cloud Run, Cloud Storage, AlloyDB, Spanner, Looker, and “many more” services getting MCP support in the coming months.
They’re not building this infrastructure speculatively. They’re responding to demand. The agentic future I’ve been predicting since 2017 is arriving faster than most brands are prepared for.
Consider where we were:
- 1998: I started in SEO - the year Google was incorporated
- 2017: I introduced Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) - be THE answer
- 2025: I introduced AI Assistive Agent Optimization (AAO) - be THE selection for action
- Today: Google builds the infrastructure that makes autonomous agent actions real
Each evolution has compressed faster than the last. Brands that waited to adapt to AEO are now scrambling. Brands that wait to adapt to AAO will find themselves excluded from transactions entirely.
I Called It. Google Built It. Now the Clock Is Ticking.
The zero-sum moment I warned about isn’t theoretical anymore. Google just announced the protocol layer that enables it.
When an AI agent acts on a user’s behalf - booking, purchasing, hiring, provisioning - there is one winner and everyone else is invisible. Not second place. Invisible.
Your brand needs to be understood, trusted, AND actionable. The first two get you into consideration. The third gets you selected.
The brands that prepared - that built entity recognition, established authority, AND structured their services for agent interaction - are positioned to capture autonomous transactions.
The brands that only optimized for search, or only adapted for AI conversation, have a shrinking window. MCP support is rolling out now. Agent capabilities are expanding monthly. The infrastructure for the agentic economy is being built in real time.
The question isn’t whether AI agents will execute transactions autonomously. Google just told us that’s “the key to the agentic future.”
The question is whether your brand will be the one they select.
