Google turned up the heat in the AI shopping wars this weekend, announcing plans to turn Gemini into a merchant and launching an open-source standard built together with major retailers including Shopify, Walmart, and Target. The move comes as companies like OpenAI, Amazon, and Perplexity jostle for power and influence at the heart of a growing AI-powered shopping ecosystem, with consumers increasingly turning to the technology to streamline purchasing.

At the National Retail Federation’s annual conference this weekend, Google said it had partnered with Shopify, Target, Walmart, Wayfair, and Etsy to develop a protocol it hopes will become the industry standard for shopping with AI. The standard, called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), is designed to streamline how AI agents and retailers’ systems communicate throughout the shopping process, from product discovery and payment to post-purchase support, Google vice president of ads and commerce Vidhya Srinivasan explained in a blog post. In other words, it sets up a common language for agents — AI tools capable of acting independently — and online shopping systems.

Google says the new standard will power a forthcoming “checkout feature” on Search and Gemini, which would allow users to make purchases directly using the AI tools without having to switch between apps or webpages. The feature will bring Gemini and Google’s AI Mode in Search in line with competitors like Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which launched purchasing options last year.

Google hopes UCP will be widely used by retailers and others in the e-commerce ecosystem, an area that is quickly becoming a battleground for companies to prove the tangible value of generative AI. UCP is open-source, meaning companies can freely use it rather than having to develop their own tools to deal with AI agents. It is compatible with existing industry standards like the Model Context Protocol, Srinivasan says. It will compete with a similar standard for agentic shopping OpenAI launched last, the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which is also open-source.

UCP has already secured buy-in from more than 20 other companies in the online shopping ecosystem, the Google executive says. This includes payment giants like Visa, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, and Stripe, as well as retailers like The Home Depot, Macy’s, Best Buy, Kroger, Lowe’s, Gap, and Zalando. Ant Group, an affiliate of Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, has also endorsed the standard. Many of these partners are likely to — or already have — partner with other AI companies as well. Shopify merchants, for example, can sell in AI modes on Gemini, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, and PayPal has also partnered with OpenAI.

As well as the buy button on Gemini and the UCP standard, Google also said it is launching a business agent on Monday that will allow shoppers to chat with brands directly on Search. In this case, “directly” means chatting with a virtual assistant from the brand that can “answer product questions in a brand’s voice.” Retailers including Lowe’s, Michael’s, Poshmark, and Reebok are among the first to sign up.

The announcements come as companies bet big on AI-driven shopping, with firms like Amazon infusing it into almost every step of the shopping experience. The technology has yet to prove itself as a useful assistant — The Verge’s experience has been glitchy, to say the least — but companies are certain AI agents are the future. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company’s new standard is laying the “groundwork” for agentic shopping, which “will be a big part of how we shop in the not-so-distant future.”