Google turned up the heat in the AI shopping wars this weekend, announcing plans to turn Gemini into a merchant and launching an open-source standard in collaboration with major retailers including Shopify, Walmart and Target. The move comes as companies like OpenAI, Amazon and Perplexity vie for power and influence at the center of a growing AI-powered shopping ecosystem, with consumers increasingly turning to the technology to streamline shopping.
At the National Retail Federation’s annual conference this weekend, Google said it has partnered with Shopify, Target, Walmart, Wayfair and Etsy to develop a protocol it hopes will become the industry standard for shopping with AI. StandardCalled Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), it is designed to streamline how AI agents and retailers’ systems communicate throughout the shopping process, from product discovery and payment to post-purchase support, Google’s vice president of advertising and commerce Vidya Srinivasan explained in a blog postIn other words, it establishes a common language for agents – AI tools capable of acting independently – and online shopping systems,
Google says the new standard will power the upcoming “checkout feature” on Search and Gemini, which will allow users to make purchases directly using AI tools without having to switch between apps or webpages. The feature will bring Gemini and Google’s AI mode in search in line with competitors like Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which launched shopping options last year.
Google expects UCP to be widely used by retailers and others in the e-commerce ecosystem, an area that is increasingly becoming a battleground for companies to prove the real value of generative AI. UCP is open-source, meaning companies can use it freely rather than developing their own tools to deal with AI agents. Srinivasan says this model is compatible with existing industry standards such as the Context Protocol. It will compete with the agentic commerce protocol, a similar standard to agentic shopping OpenAI, launched last year, which is also open-source.
The Google executive says UCP has already secured buy-in from more than 20 other companies in the online shopping ecosystem. This includes payment giants like Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal, and Stripe, as well as retailers like The Home Depot, Macy’s, Best Buy, Kroger, Lowe’s, Gap, and Zalando. Ant Group, an affiliate of Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, has also done the same supported Standard. Many of these partners are also likely to have – or already have – partnerships with other AI companies. For example, Shopify merchants can sell in AI mode on Gemini, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot, and PayPal has also partnered with OpenAI.
As well as the purchase button on Gemini and UCP Standard, Google also said it is launching a business agent On Monday, it will allow shoppers to chat with brands directly on Search. In this case, “direct” means chatting with a virtual assistant from the brand who can “answer product questions in the brand’s voice.” Retailers including Lowe’s, Michaels, Poshmark and Reebok have been among the first to sign up.
These announcements come as companies are betting big on AI-powered shopping, with companies like Amazon incorporating it into almost every step of the shopping experience. Technology has yet to prove itself as a useful aid – The VergeThe experience has been messy, to say the least – but companies are convinced that AI agents are the future. Google CEO Sundar Pichai Said The company’s new standard is laying the “groundwork” for agentic purchasing, which “will be a big part of how we shop in the not-too-distant future.”
