Google set the tone in the AI shopping wars this weekend by announcing plans to turn Gemini into a merchant and launch an open-source standard built in partnership with major retailers including Shopify, Walmart and Target. The move comes at a time when companies like OpenAI, Amazon and Perplexity are vying for power and influence at the heart of a growing AI-powered retail ecosystem, with consumers increasingly turning to the technology to streamline their purchases.
At the National Retail Federation’s annual conference this weekend, Google said it has collaborated with Shopify, Target, Walmart, Wayfair and Etsy to develop a protocol that it hopes will become the industry standard for shopping with AI. The standardCalled the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), it is designed to streamline how AI agents and retailers’ systems communicate during the shopping process, from product discovery and payment to post-purchase support, Vidhya Srinivasan, Google’s vice president of advertising and commerce, explained in a blog post. In other words, it creates a common language for agents – AI tools that can act independently – and online store systems.
Google says the new standard will power an upcoming “checkout” feature on Search and Gemini, which will allow users to make purchases directly using the AI tools without having to switch between apps or web pages. 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 purchasing options last year.
Google hopes UCP will be widely used by retailers and others in the e-commerce ecosystem, an area that is quickly becoming a battleground for companies to prove the tangible value of generative AI. UCP is open-source, meaning companies can use it freely rather than having to develop their own tools to deal with AI agents. It is compatible with existing industry standards such as the Model Context Protocol, says Srinivasan. It will compete with a similar agentic shopping standard that OpenAI launched last year, the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which is also open-source.
UCP has already secured buy-in from more than 20 other companies in the online shopping ecosystem, the Google executive says. 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, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has also done so endorsed the standard. Many of these partners will likely also collaborate (if at all) with other AI companies. For example, Shopify merchants can sell in AI modes on Gemini, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Copilot, and PayPal also partners with OpenAI.
In addition to the buy button on Gemini and the UCP standard, Google also said it is a business agent on Monday that allows shoppers to chat with brands directly on Search. In this case, “direct” means chatting with a branded virtual assistant who can “answer product questions in a brand’s voice.” Retailers like Lowe’s, Michael’s, Poshmark and Reebok were among the first to sign up.
The announcements come at a time when companies are making big bets on AI-powered shopping, with companies like Amazon integrating it into virtually every step of the shopping experience. The technology has yet to prove itself as a useful assistant – The edgeThe company’s experience has been mixed at best, but companies are confident that AI agents are the future. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said The company’s new standard lays the “foundation” for agentic shopping, which “will be a big part of the way we shop in the not-so-distant future.”
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