{"slug": "googles-new-universal-cart-wants-to-follow-you-across-the-entire-internet", "title": "Google’s new Universal Cart wants to follow you across the entire internet", "summary": "At Google I/O, the company introduced Universal Cart, a centralized shopping hub that allows users to add items from across Google services like Search, YouTube, and Gmail, and uses AI to track prices and flag product compatibility issues. Google also announced updates to its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), which will enable users to authorize AI agents to autonomously make purchases within set limits. These developments signal Google’s strategy to transform AI assistants into active participants in online commerce, giving the company greater influence over the entire shopping journey.", "body_md": "At Google I/O on Tuesday, Google introduced Universal Cart, its agentic hub for managing shopping in one place. The tech giant also announced updates to its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and teased that it would bring the technology to Google products in the coming months, enabling users to authorize agents to make payments on their behalf.\nThe announcements signal Google’s push to turn AI assistants from passive recommendation tools into active participants in online commerce. By launching a centralized shopping system and building infrastructure that lets software agents complete purchases autonomously, the company is positioning itself to control more of the entire shopping journey, and potentially the relationship between consumers and the merchants competing for their attention.\nWith Universal Cart, users can add products they’re considering from anywhere on Google — while browsing Search, chatting with Gemini, watching YouTube, or reading Gmail. Once items are added, Universal Cart tracks deals, monitors price drops, surfaces price history insights, and alerts users when items are back in stock.\nThe feature is built around something Google knows well, which is that most people shop across multiple devices, multiple retailers, and over the course of many days.\nThe cart also uses AI to help shoppers make better decisions. For example, if you’re building your first custom PC, you can add parts from multiple merchants into a single cart, and Google may flag compatibility issues, such as a processor that doesn’t work with the motherboard you selected — and suggest an alternative.\nFor frequent travelers or rewards maximizers, the feature can also surface hidden savings and help stretch your points further because it’s built on Google Wallet.\nThanks to Google’s open-standard Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), users can check out directly through Google with participating merchants, or transfer their items to the merchant site and complete the purchase there.\nUniversal Cart is rolling out in the U.S. today and coming to the Gemini app this summer, with YouTube and Gmail to follow, Google says.\nGoogle also announced that UCP is expanding to more categories, like hotels and local food delivery services. UCP-powered experiences will also expand beyond the U.S. to Canada and Australia in the coming months, and later to the U.K.\nThe more consequential announcement for the commerce industry may be AP2, Google’s protocol designed to let AI agents securely make payments on users’ behalf within defined limits. At I/O, Google detailed the guardrails users can set, including specifying the brands and products they want, and a spending limit. When those conditions are met, the agent makes the purchase automatically.\nGoogle says it’s bringing AP2 to its own products in the coming months. That integration would give Google direct visibility into what consumers discover, consider, and ultimately buy, and it’s a degree of commercial influence that retailers and payment processors will be watching closely.\nUnder the hood, AP2 creates a transparent, verifiable link between the user, the merchant, and the payment processor, with encryption protecting user data throughout. The protocol also includes tamper-proof digital records that ensure the agent is always acting on the user’s behalf, and a permanent audit trail that both buyers and sellers can reference for returns or disputes.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/googles-new-universal-cart-wants-to-follow-you-across-the-entire-internet", "canonical_source": "https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/19/googles-new-universal-cart-wants-to-follow-you-across-the-entire-internet/", "published_at": "2026-05-19 17:45:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-19 21:34:07.350374+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "products", "enterprise-software", "data"], "entities": ["Google", "Universal Cart", "Gemini", "YouTube", "Gmail", "Google I/O", "Agent Payments Protocol", "AP2"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/googles-new-universal-cart-wants-to-follow-you-across-the-entire-internet", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/googles-new-universal-cart-wants-to-follow-you-across-the-entire-internet.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/googles-new-universal-cart-wants-to-follow-you-across-the-entire-internet.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/googles-new-universal-cart-wants-to-follow-you-across-the-entire-internet.jsonld"}}