Google’s Universal Cart shopping tool launches in the US
Quick Answer
Google has launched its Universal Cart shopping tool in the U.S., allowing users to save and track products from various retailers across search and the Gemini app.
Quick Take
This tool not only centralizes shopping but also offers notifications for price drops and stock availability, enhancing the online shopping experience with tailored payment options and promo codes.
Key Points
- Universal Cart allows users to collect items from multiple retailers in one place.
- Users receive notifications for price drops and restocks on saved products.
- The tool integrates with Google's Universal Commerce Protocol for streamlined checkout.
- Tailored payment options consider credit card perks and relevant promo codes.
- Google's AI-powered shopping features include conversational product discovery.
📖 Reader Mode
~2 min readGoogle on Thursday said “Universal Cart,” a tool that lets users collect and monitor products they find across search and in the Gemini app, is now available to U.S. users. The company first previewed the tool at Google I/O in May.
The idea is to make online shopping easier to manage. Find something you like, save it to your cart, and move on. When you return later, your items and shopping progress are still there, so you don’t have to hunt down the same products or start over. Universal Cart can collect items from multiple retailers, turning it into a central hub for browsing and keeping track of potential purchases.
Google says the cart can also help shoppers stay on top of deals and availability. The tool can send notifications when a saved product’s price drops or when an out-of-stock item becomes available again.
The tool is also designed to offer more tailored help during the shopping process. Google says it can take credit card perks into account when helping users choose how to pay, and also surface relevant promo codes.
Checkout is tied to Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP, an open standard the company introduced earlier this year. UCP is designed to help AI agents and retailers work together across different parts of the shopping journey, including checkout.
Google is already deeply invested in AI-powered shopping, and Universal Cart is its latest effort to make the experience more convenient. It joins features such as conversational product discovery in Search’s AI Mode and Google’s “Let Google Call” tool, which uses an AI agent to contact nearby stores and check whether an item is in stock.
Google isn’t the only company bringing AI into e-commerce. Amazon, OpenAI, and other rivals have added agentic commerce features as companies look for ways to make chatbots useful beyond answering questions.
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Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch.
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— Originally published at techcrunch.com
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