Building a new chapter in retail
What we have learned from the past 27 years of working with retailers is that we only succeed together.
Our goal is to build a future of retail where opportunity is expanded for all. One where customers can use Google products they love as part of a seamless shopping experience. A future where you are able to build strong relationships with your customers that long outlast any search or purchase.
AI can help at every step, from discovery and decision to delivery and everything else needed to create a full customer experience. Let’s focus on discovery and decision.
Improving product discovery on our platforms
Google Search has always been an important starting point for online shopping. Since 2021, our Shopping Graph has information about products in real time. It has over 50 billion product listings, including inventory, prices and reviews. More than 2 billion of these listings are updated every single hour. It’s information at retail speed.
Now, with AI mode, we’re seeing these journeys move from keywords to natural conversations. It is a fundamental shift. Whereas you once had to sort through pages of results, AI can do the hard work of narrowing down exactly what you’re most interested in buying.
And last year we brought the Shopping graph to the Gemini app, so it’s also much more useful for people asking shopping-related questions.
Introduction of a new protocol for agent trading
For many people, discovery is the fun part of shopping. Making a decision is where things get more difficult. As an indecisive shopper myself, I look forward to the day when agents can help me get from discovery to purchase.
At Google, we’re busy laying the groundwork for this agent ecosystem to work well. It includes building a common language for these systems and services to talk to each other.
As a next step, we are introducing the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), designed for the age of agent trading. It was built to meet the needs of retailers AND customers, keeping the full customer relationship at the center – from discovery to decision and beyond.
It’s open, agnostic, built with industry leaders Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, and Walmart, and endorsed by 20+ more.
Importantly, UCP is compatible with existing industry protocols such as Agent2Agent, Agent Payments Protocol and Model Context Protocol. It is also built to work across verticals. And it is available from today.
You might wonder why we are introducing another protocol. The industry needs a protocol that works globally and takes into account the nuances of trade travel, and this is a critical building block for it.