Google Cloud Next '26 Made One Thing Clear: Agents Need Infrastructure, Not Hype

This is a submission for the Google Cloud NEXT Writing Challenge Google Cloud Next '26 had a very loud headline: the agentic enterprise is here. But the more interesting story, at least for developers, was quieter. It was not just "agents are smarter now." It was this: AI agents are finally being treated like production software. That may sound less exciting than a keynote demo, but I think it is the real shift. The serious part of the event was not that an agent can answer a question, generate