Gemini can finally search Gmail and Drive, following Microsoft
Google has finally started adding support for its own internal services to Google Gemini, just a month after Microsoft began offering the same features to Windows testers.
Google said on Wednesday that Gemini Deep Research can now connect to Gmail, Google Drive and Chat, as well as Docs, Slides, Sheets and PDF files stored in those services.
“This powerful new feature is now available to all Gemini users,” Google said in a blog post on Wednesday. “To get started, simply select ‘Deep Search’ from the Tools menu in Gemini on desktop and select your sources. This will start rolling out to mobile users in the coming days.”
On October 10, Microsoft announced that its own Copilot AI could start reading Gmail and your Google Calendar through a technology called Connectors, which lets you manually give Copilot access so it can ingest and analyze that data. (At the time, this was limited to members of the Windows Insiders testing program.) A week later, Microsoft more formally announced that these same connectors would allow Copilot to access OneDrive files and Outlook contacts, emails, and calendar events, as well as connect to Google services such as Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts. Microsoft, however, has not officially stated when these additional features will be made available to users, giving Google a first-to-market advantage.
During an August livestream, OpenAI and ChatGPT also briefly demonstrated Gmail integration, although ChatGPT’s connections don’t seem as deep or meaningful at the moment. However, OpenAI’s DevDay 2025 livestream revealed that ChatGPT can work with apps like Zillow and Canva and query them for more information.
For now, the only area where the two services don’t appear to overlap is in Google Chats, although that may be a feature that Microsoft has specifically neglected to promote. Regardless, Microsoft and Google now appear to offer similar capabilities to allow their AI services to perform in-depth searches and understand what your colleagues are talking about.
