Anthropic launches Claude Research and Google Workspace integration: autonomous research in "less than a minute"

Anthropic has launched two major upgrades to Claude: an autonomous Research capability and a Google Workspace integration, pitching the package as a "true virtual collaborator" for enterprise workers.

#What happened

• Anthropic introduced Research, an autonomous capability that lets Claude independently conduct multiple searches that build upon each other while determining what to investigate next.
• The Google Workspace integration connects Claude to users' emails, calendars, and documents, eliminating the need for manual uploads.
• Anthropic promises well-researched answers "in less than a minute," compared with rival products that "take up to 30 minutes" to generate responses, according to an Anthropic spokesperson.
• The Google Drive Catalog feature uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Anthropic says: "We don't train our models on user data by default," with strict per-user and per-organization authentication and access controls.
• Availability: Research is in early beta for Max, Team, and Enterprise plans in the United States, Japan, and Brazil. Web search has expanded to Brazil and Japan. The Google Workspace integration is in beta for all paid users, though administrators must enable it company-wide before individual use. Drive Catalog is restricted to Enterprise plan customers.

#Why it matters

• Anthropic is directly challenging OpenAI (ChatGPT/Dots) and Microsoft Copilot in the enterprise AI productivity market with a speed-first, autonomy-first pitch: answers in minutes for time-sensitive decisions rather than exhaustive half-hour research runs.
• Citations on every researched answer and no-by-default model training address the two enterprise blockers — accuracy accountability and data privacy — while competing on Google's own turf, since Gemini already connects to Workspace.