The Google-powered future of retail is here

Google has always been a part of online shopping but with AI, the tech giant hopes to go beyond the low hanging fruit.

At the National Retail Federation’s annual conference in New York, Google launched what it called a Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) for agentic commerce in partnership with Walmart, Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and more. UCP isn’t just a new feature; it’s Google’s full-stack approach for agentic commerce or agent-assisted shopping.

“Our goal is to build a future of retail where the opportunity space expands for everyone, a future where customers use Google products they love as part of a seamless shopping experience,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said during an NRF keynote.

“There’s a lot that UCP will enable and we are starting with native checkout. Soon you’ll see a buy button directly on Google surfaces including AI Mode in Search and Gemini,” Pichai said.

Over time, UCP will enable AI agents to discover inventory, negotiate options, and execute payments without ever leaving the conversation with the customer.

“It’s a more seamless experience for the customer and the retailer is able to shape the relationship at every step as the merchant of record,” Pichai added.

In May, Google announced the rollout of AI Mode, an AI-powered search tool with conversational capability, advanced reasoning, and multimodality. The tool has the capability to go deeper through follow-up questions and will show up more significantly in Google’s AI shopping experience.

Google has always played a role in shopping. The difference now is where the search happens, Andy Szanger, director of strategic industries at CWD, a company that manages tech stacks for retailers, told Retail Brew. Instead of Google.com, consumers are searching through Gemini and other AI tools, all of which Google is integrating into one experience.

“People are moving more toward having AI as an integral part of their every day, and shopping is just a natural extension of that,” Szanger said. “It’s not going to replace shopping in-store, but it’s another avenue that retailers need to be thinking about. How do they drive traffic to their brands? And Google is one of those partners that are actually doing that.”