Google launches Universal Cart across Search and Gemini

Google says Universal Cart is launching in the U.S. and rolling out across Search and the Gemini app.[1] The cart organizes products from multiple stores in one place, and items added through Search or Gemini are saved to that same cart.[1][3] Google’s announcement was authored by Suresh Ganapathy, senior director of product management for Consumer Shopping.[1] Google also says people shop across its services more than one billion times a day.[2] That figure describes activity across Google’s services, not a projected number of Universal Cart users.

Google says the cart can notify shoppers when saved items’ prices drop or when they return to stock.[1] It can also display relevant promotional codes it finds alongside saved products.[3] The cart draws on Google’s Shopping Graph, which Google says contains more than 60 billion continually refreshed product listings.[1] It can flag incompatible products and suggest alternatives.[2] Google says Universal Cart runs on its Gemini models and will improve as those models do.[2]

Shoppers can check out with Google Pay or transfer their items to a merchant’s site to complete a purchase.[2] Google says checkout through Universal Cart is powered by its Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP.[1] Google named Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair, and Shopify merchants Fenty and Steve Madden among merchants for select checkout features.[2] Google says the brand remains the merchant of record regardless of which checkout route a shopper uses.[2] The announcement does not say that every named merchant supports every checkout feature.

Google says it plans to add Universal Cart to Gmail and YouTube but has not announced a timeline.[3] Google describes UCP as designed to help AI agents and retailers work together across shopping tasks, including checkout.[4] The launch comes as OpenAI and Meta have launched agentic AI assistants that can shop online on users’ behalf.[3] eMarketer says Universal Cart could intensify price competition, prompting retailers to cut prices or increase promotions to win sales.[5] It also says it remains unclear whether the cart will generate incremental purchases or add another step to existing shopping journeys.[5]