If Google\u2019s latest commerce announcements signal anything, it\u2019s that the tech platform wants to own the shopper journey from discovery to purchase.<\/p>\n
Last week, Google unveiled Universal Cart, dubbed an \u201cintelligent shopping cart that works across retailers and across services,\u201d including Gemini and search. In theory, a person could add things to their cart whether using Google search, Gemini, YouTube or Gmail. Once a product is added to cart, Universal Cart finds deals and price drops using Gemini models. When the shopper is ready to buy, they can check out using Google Pay.<\/p>\n
Universal Cart is just one part of Google\u2019s beefed up Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)<\/a>. UCP is the groundwork that enables agentic shopping within Google\u2019s ecosystem that launched in January. Other bells and whistles include buy-now and pay-later features and loyalty pricing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can now see that this isn\u2019t just about agentic commerce, but is a new commerce experience that will be showing up on a lot of Google\u2019s most used surfaces (YouTube, Search, Ads, and Gemini),\u201d said a commerce exec who spoke on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n Advertiser concerns and Google\u2019s \u2018matchmaker\u2019 role<\/p>\n The question for advertisers, as far as Alicia Gehring, vp of media strategy, WHITE64, is concerned, is challenger brands\u2019 reliance on Google to continue to attract interested shoppers at a cost that makes sense for advertisers.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s roadmap is likely \u201cthe beginning of a broader restructuring of commerce around AI agents and assistant-driven decisioning,\u201d said Molly Schonthal, managing director of agentic commerce at VML in an emailed statement to Digiday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Historically, Google has invested in discovery and search intent as the tech behemoth sits on a treasure trove of shopper data. Now, Google is looking to be \u201cmatchmaker\u201d between shoppers and brands, said Ashish Gupta, vp and general manager of merchant shopping at Google. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are not a retailer, we are not a marketplace, and that approach continues to guide us in this agentic era as well,\u201d Gupta said at a virtual roundtable ahead of Google Marketing Live last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rivals\u2019 AI commerce moves<\/p>\n Pressure, however, has been mounting from elsewhere in the commerce space as it becomes more competitive.<\/p>\n \u201cI think they\u2019re seeing the massive volume of transactions and shopping in commerce come out TikTok Shop, and coming out of Meta, and they\u2019re saying, \u2018We want a piece of that\u2019,\u201d said Phil Case, president and chief client officer at Max Connect Digital, a performance driven digital agency, referring to Google\u2019s latest UCP updates.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Amazon integrated its LLM-powered AI assistant, Alexa+, into its shopping experience and Amazon ecosystem. At the same time, Amazon\u2019s bespoke AI shopping assistant Rufus was replaced by Alexa for Shopping. Users can ask questions in the main search bar, create personalized shopping guides and automate deal finding.<\/p>\n There was also OpenAI\u2019s now defunct<\/a> Instant Checkout feature in ChatGPT. Instant Checkout worked across the web, allowing shoppers to pay merchants directly from ChatGPT\u2019s app and leaving fulfillment to retailers.\u00a0<\/p>\n TikTok Shop too has been gaining steam in the social stratosphere, driving $4.9 billion in U.S. sales, according to e-commerce data provider Charm.io and reported by The Wall Street Journal.<\/a> In March Meta is reportedly testing a shopping research feature in its AI chatbot in hopes to rival Gemini and OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT, per Bloomberg.<\/a><\/p>\n The battle for consumer trust<\/p>\n \u201cThe broader implication is that platforms increasingly want to become the \u2018digital steward\u2019 of consumer decision-making, not just the destination where transactions occur,\u201d said Schonthal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Google stands a better chance than OpenAI \u2014 at least after its Instant Checkout flub, said the anonymous exec. The agentic commerce battle is less about OpenAI versus Google and more about what the exec calls \u201chorizontal agents,\u201d like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic that operate within their own ecosystems, and \u201cvertical agents,\u201d like Amazon and Walmart that operate within a specific commerce domain.<\/p>\n