Beyond Universal Cart, Google made roughly 100 announcements at this year's I/O conference. Below, I'm going to highlight the ones that are most relevant to e-commerce merchants, customers, and app developers.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash is here, and it powers nearly everything else on this list. Google launched the first model in its 3.5 series built for long-horizon agentic tasks. The company claims it can deliver flagship-level intelligence at Flash-tier speed, often at less than half the cost of competing frontier models. Gemini 3.5 Flash is available immediately through the Gemini API, Android Studio, and Antigravity, and a 3.5 Pro version is expected next month.
- Gemini Omni can generate video (and eventually anything) from any input. Google's new Omni model combines Gemini's reasoning with its generative media tools, taking image, text, video, or audio as input and producing video you can edit conversationally rather than regenerate from scratch. All Omni output carries Google's invisible SynthID watermark.
- Google gave its search box its biggest overhaul in over 25 years. The reimagined Search box now accepts text, images, files, videos, and Chrome tabs, and reasons across all of them at once. Google also merged AI Overviews and AI Mode into a single experience, letting users move from a question to an overview to a follow-up without interruption.
- AI Mode crossed 1 billion monthly users. Google's most advanced AI Search now runs Gemini 3.5 Flash as its default model globally, with the company reporting that AI Mode queries have more than doubled every quarter since launch and that total Search queries hit an all-time high last quarter.
- Search is getting 24/7 “information agents” that monitor topics for you. Rolling out this summer to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, these agents run in the background and track changes across the web on any topic you choose, from real-time finance and shopping to news and sports. Then they send you a synthesized update with the option to act on it. You can run several at once.
- Search can now build you custom mini-apps on the fly. Using Antigravity and Gemini 3.5 Flash, Search can generate custom layouts, interactive visuals, and full dashboards or trackers tailored to an ongoing project, like a home move or a wedding. Google calls these “mini apps,” and they're coming to Search in the months ahead.
- Gemini Spark is a 24/7 personal agent that will eventually spend money for you. Spark works in the background on your phone or laptop, even when they're off, taking action under your direction and checking in before major moves. Google's roadmap includes letting Spark authorize payments within budgets and merchant limits you set. It's rolling out first to trusted testers, with a beta for U.S. Ultra subscribers next.
- Daily Brief digests your day before you wake up. A new Gemini app agent that works overnight, analyzing your inbox, calendar, and tasks to surface what matters and suggest next steps. It's rolling out now to Google AI subscribers in the U.S. who have connected their Google apps.
- You can now build native Android apps in Google AI Studio and publish them to the Play Store. Just pick “Build an Android app” and start prompting. AI Studio now supports the Google Play Console, letting developers preview apps in a browser-based emulator and push to Google Play's Internal Test Track with a single click. This could let e-commerce brands launch their own custom shopping apps connected to their stores, or build a dedicated space for exclusive content and customer perks.
- Antigravity 2.0 launched, and the Gemini CLI shutdown sparked a developer backlash. Google's agent-first development platform got a standalone desktop app for orchestrating multiple agents in parallel, plus a new Antigravity CLI for terminal users. The catch: the old Gemini CLI was open source, and the Antigravity CLI replacing it is not. Free and individual-tier users have until June 18 to migrate, while paying enterprise customers keep their access. Developers have accused Google of harvesting a year of open-source community contributions to build a tool it then closed off and moved into its paid stack.
- Google brought UCP tools to merchants and added AI performance tracking to Merchant Center. Alongside Universal Cart, Google rolled out Universal Commerce Protocol features on the retailer side, including new Merchant Center tools that let merchants track how their brand is showing up in AI-driven search results. It's the same protocol Shopify just opened to all developers (see Story #5).
- Google rolled out new AI-generated ad formats across Search and AI Mode. Building on its Google Marketing Live announcements, Google is testing brand and product ads generated by Gemini that appear below AI Mode responses, plus expanded “direct offers” ads in standard search results. All are labeled “sponsored.”
- There's a new $100 AI Ultra developer plan, and AI Pro now includes YouTube Premium Lite. The Ultra plan targets developers and technical leads with 5x higher usage limits and 20TB of storage. Separately, Google AI Pro subscriptions now bundle in YouTube Premium Lite, an $8.99-per-month value, for ad-free, offline, background YouTube viewing.
- Google's SynthID watermarking is expanding to Search and Chrome. Three years after launch, SynthID has been used 50 million times to tag AI-generated content. Google is bringing AI-content verification to Search and Chrome and adding support for C2PA Content Credentials, so you can check whether an image is an unaltered camera original. OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and Kakao are adopting the tech too.
- Personal Intelligence is expanding to nearly 200 countries. AI Mode can now securely connect to apps like Gmail and Google Photos (with Calendar coming soon) to personalize results, rolling out across 98 languages with no subscription required. Google says users choose if and when to connect each app.
- Samsung's “Intelligent Eyewear” smart glasses are coming this fall. Google's next big Android XR push is smart glasses in two flavors: audio glasses that talk in your ear, and display glasses that show information in your field of view. The first audio glasses, built with Gentle Monster, Warby Parker, and Samsung, arrive this fall and work with both Android and iOS.
That's the e-commerce-relevant slice of I/O 2026, but it's a fraction of what Google announced. The other 80+ announcements focus on creative tools (Google Pics, Flow Music, Stitch), science research tools, and Workspace updates. The full list is worth a read.
