Google launches Universal Cart for U.S. shopping users

Traders Union
All News
Business & Wealth
Companies
Google Universal Cart U.S. launch

Highlights

Google launched Universal Cart in the U.S., enabling users to save and buy products across Search and Gemini from multiple retailers as of June 2024.
Universal Cart leverages alerts for price drops, restocks, relevant promo codes, and incorporates credit card perks directly into the checkout process through the Universal Commerce Protocol.
Google’s expansion of AI-driven shopping tools, including Universal Cart, intensifies competition with Amazon and OpenAI as the industry pushes agentic commerce features.

U.S. rollout ties shopping discovery to checkout

As reported by TechCrunch, Google said on Thursday that Universal Cart is now available to users in the U.S. after first previewing the feature at Google I/O in May.

The product is designed to give shoppers a central place to collect items they find across Google Search and Gemini, allowing them to return later without needing to search for the same products again. By pulling in items from multiple retailers, the tool aims to simplify browsing and keep purchase decisions organized.

Google also says Universal Cart can notify users when a saved item's price falls or when an out-of-stock product becomes available again. The company adds that the feature can factor in credit card perks when suggesting payment options and surface relevant promo codes during the buying process.

Checkout is connected to Google's Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP, an open standard introduced earlier this year. The protocol is intended to help AI agents and retailers work together across more parts of the shopping process, including the final transaction stage.

AI commerce competition intensifies

The launch adds to Google's broader effort to make shopping tools more useful through artificial intelligence. Universal Cart joins other features such as conversational product discovery in Search's AI Mode and the "Let Google Call" tool, which uses an AI agent to contact nearby stores and check inventory.

Google is entering a more crowded market as Amazon, OpenAI and other rivals add agentic commerce features of their own. The competitive push reflects a wider industry effort to extend chatbots beyond answering questions and into product discovery, deal tracking and checkout support.

In our earlier article on a KPMG U.S. CEO survey, we covered how many large U.S. companies are seeing AI agents deliver incremental efficiency and growth gains, even as only a small share of leaders call the technology transformational so far. The piece also highlighted that executives are planning continued investment in AI infrastructure alongside hiring and retraining efforts, suggesting adoption is expanding without yet fully reshaping core operating models.

This material may contain third-party opinions, none of the data and information on this webpage constitutes investment advice according to our Disclaimer. While we adhere to strict Editorial Integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners.