Google launches Universal Cart shopping tool in the US

Google said Thursday that Universal Cart is now available to US users, after first being previewed at Google I/O in May. It lets users save items found in Search and the Gemini app, collecting products across multiple retailers into a unified browsing and tracking hub; when they return, items and shopping progress are preserved without re-searching. The tool also notifies users when saved items drop in price or come back in stock, and factors in credit card benefits and surfaces relevant promo codes at payment. Checkout is tied to the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard Google introduced earlier this year that lets AI agents and retailers work together across shopping steps, including checkout. Universal Cart is Google's latest move in AI shopping, alongside conversational product discovery in Search's AI Mode and Let Google Call, which uses AI agents to phone nearby stores for inventory. For developers building e-commerce apps and agentic checkout, UCP as an open standard means integration may differ from their own payment flows; for US users shopping via the Gemini app, centralized cross-platform management and price-drop alerts are the most direct changes. Amazon, OpenAI and others are also pushing agentic shopping, and competition over interfaces and standards in this space is heating up.