Google announced Universal Cart at its Google I/O developer conference in 2026, a centralized shopping tool that lets users save and manage products from across Google’s ecosystem — including Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail — in a single place.
The feature launched in the U.S. on May 20, 2026, and is coming to the Gemini app later this summer, with YouTube and Gmail integration to follow. Google also confirmed that its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), which powers direct checkout with participating merchants, is expanding to new categories such as hotels and local food delivery, and will roll out to Canada and Australia in the coming months, with the U.K. to follow.
Universal Cart tracks price drops, monitors deals, surfaces price history, and alerts users when out-of-stock items become available. It is built on Google Wallet, which allows it to surface rewards and savings for frequent travelers or points users. For more complex purchases — such as building a custom PC — the cart’s AI can flag compatibility issues between components sourced from different merchants and suggest alternatives.
Alongside Universal Cart, Google detailed updates to its Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), a system designed to let AI agents make purchases autonomously on a user’s behalf within defined limits. Users can specify preferred brands, products, and a spending cap; when those conditions are met, the agent completes the purchase automatically. Google said it plans to bring AP2 to its own products in the coming months.
Google says AP2 uses encryption to protect user data and creates tamper-proof digital records to ensure agents act within authorized parameters, with a permanent audit trail available to both buyers and sellers for returns or disputes.
The announcements suggest Google is moving to position AI assistants as active participants in online transactions rather than passive recommendation tools — a shift that may draw close scrutiny from retailers and payment processors given the degree of commercial visibility it could give Google over consumer purchasing behavior.
Source: TechCrunch