This Omni Talk Retail Fast Five segment explores Google's new Universal Cart, which allows shoppers to add products from Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail into a single AI-powered shopping experience.

Chris Walton and Shelley Huff discuss why Google has pursued this vision for years, how AI-powered shopping could reshape customer behavior, and whether Google's latest move represents the biggest challenge Amazon has faced in e-commerce.

The conversation also examines the risks for retailers if Google begins controlling product discovery, comparison shopping, checkout, and customer decision-making.

⏩ Tune in for the full episode here: https://youtu.be/3lV5GVTa-TQ

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Shoppers can add products to the Universal Cart while browsing search or chatting with Gemini and the cart will search for discounts, aggregate price history and notify shoppers when out of stock items become available again.

Compatible retailers already on board include Walmart, Shopify, Wayfair, Nike and Target.

That's a pretty good list with checkout powered by Google Pay or the option to transfer items to a merchant's own site.

Universal Cart is rolling out across search and the Gemini app in the US this summer with YouTube and Gmail to follow.

The feature is built on Google's Universal Commerce Protocol or its UCP and an open standard co developed with retail partners.

Google also teased updates to its Agent Payments protocol, which lets AI agents make secure purchases on a shopper's behalf with user defined guardrails.

Shelley, coming in hot on this one.

Buy or sell the idea that Google's Universal Cart is a more significant long term threat to Amazon's E commerce dominance than anything Apple, TikTok or Walmart has ever thrown at Amazon to date.

Well, Chris, I think this is potentially one of the most important commerce announcements of the year.

And this has been a strategy of Google's for a really long time.

They've wanted to own the shopping operating system.

There's this famous meeting that Doug McMillan had with Larry and Sergey where they're like, no, we'll just have people buy it through us and you can fulfill.

Right?

And so, so this has been a strategy for a long time.

This is probably one of the better ways that they've tried to execute this.

And you know, we have known as we've looked at retail for a long time that this is where it's moving.

It's not going to be website versus website anymore.

It's going to be ecosystem versus ecosystem.

So where retailers own the transaction today, Google's trying to own the decision and there's a lot of money if they can do that.

There's really high margins, a lot of revenue if they can do that.

So on this one I think retailers really need to be careful.

If Google owns discovery comparison cart payment agents, then retailers risk becoming suppliers to Google.

So Shelley, I'm curious, like I don't remember, I don't need the exact date, but like roughly when was that conversation between Doug McMillan and Sergey and Larry of Google.

Yeah, it was a while ago.

Right, A while ago.

And Google's, Google's been thinking about this for a long time.

And so given where technology is, it's probably the best time for them to lean in and attempt to really capture this top of funnel fully.

Yeah.

So the reason I asked that question is because, you know, I think it's important to highlight that Google's been trying to do this for a while.

They've just never been able to do it.

And now to your point, they're trying to take the technology angle to make it happen.

But again, back to the question, Shelly.

Do you think, relative to Amazon, that consumers are actually going to gravitate towards doing it the way this is being purportedly described?

What's your take there?

I think it could be interesting if Google is able to offer, for instance, the best place to buy something based on the price that it is.

Like you said earlier, it's, it's looking at the price history of things.

I also think it could be interesting if it pairs like depending on what credit card you usually use, what's the best place to buy something when and with your credit card discount.

So if it can optimize all of these things for consumers, I think it could be very interesting.

But is that easily duplicatable in other places that are ecosystem driven, like a Walmart, like an Amazon?

Those are the biggest questions.

And ultimately Google doesn't control delivery, they don't control the fulfillment piece.

And so, you know, we are seeing consumer confidence really build when they can be trusted for delivery and quality and all those things.

And Google doesn't own any part of that process.

So there's a high likelihood that things could be inconsistent.

So I think that there are some risks here there.

But, and again, this is the very beginning and I'm sure they're thinking through all of these things, right?

100%.

Yeah, 100.

And I'm glad I asked you that because.

Yeah.

And we talked about the payment side last week with Laura Kennedy when she was on the show with Klarna, you know, starting to integrate with, with these LLM tools too.

But you know, I think, you know, my takeaway is like, I think, I think this is, this is def.

It's definitely a threat to Amazon, to your point.

Like, it's definitely a threat.

It's something you have to take seriously.

It's a pretty seismic announcement.

But how many use cases are there in which I want to transact one time at multiple retailers.

I don't know, but probably not that many but.

And I think there's always a but.

Which is, Shelly, what I think you're getting at too.

You have to look at the time that we're in and there's the confluence of streams that happen, which make things happen in ways that none of us ever expect.

And the one thing that I'm thinking about right now too, particularly with this announcement, is people are really budget constrained in a way they've never been before.

And so the pricing monitoring could become a really big factor for the adoption of a universal cart idea like this.

And so I think there are real use cases that emerge.

I've talked about the grocery use case before because you could save considerable money on your weekly shop by cherry picking the best priced items across multiple grocers.

And if Google's going to allow that and publicize it, I think there's a real there there.

And I think you could say the same things about home furnishings, you know, or maybe even getting ready for a night out if it marks markets to that specific use case.

I think the universal cart has definitely, definitely some legs to it.

So the answer I think could be yes, especially with just how budget constrained we are as Americans.

But last words, Shelly, what do you think?

I completely agree.

There are a lot of possibilities here and I think we'll learn the use cases over time.