Google launches Universal Cart that follows you across Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail

Google introduced Universal Cart at I/O 2026, an AI-powered multi-merchant shopping cart that lets shoppers add items to a single cart while searching, chatting with Gemini, watching YouTube, or reading Gmail.

Here's how it works: 

1. The moment a product lands in the cart, it goes to work in the background, hunting for deals and price drops, surfacing price history, and flagging when an out-of-stock item returns.
2. Google says the cart, which is powered by Gemini, leans on reasoning to prevent problems before they happen. For example, it will proactively flag when products are incompatible and suggest alternatives, as well as recommend payment methods through Google Wallet that maximize loyalty status, cashback rewards, and merchant offers.
3. When it's time to buy, the Universal Commerce Protocol handles the transaction. For participating brands, shoppers can either check out directly on Google with Google Pay, or transfer the cart to the retailer's own site to complete the purchase there.
4. No matter how a shopper chooses to buy, the retailer always remains the merchant of record, meaning the store, not Google, owns the transaction and the customer relationship.

Universal Cart rolls out across Search and the Gemini app in the U.S. this summer, with YouTube and Gmail to follow. Early participating retailers include Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair, Fenty, and Steve Madden.

Remember OpenAI's vision for Instant Checkout — which it launched in October 2025 and shut down earlier this year? Universal Cart is a significantly better implementation of what Instant Checkout hoped to be. It integrates existing product catalogs, which merchants have already been managing for years through Google Merchant Center, and surfaces customers' stored digital payment info from Google Wallet. Plus, it keeps the merchant in ownership of the transaction (which was one of OpenAI's grave mistakes) and positions Google perfectly for monetizing the search and discovery end of the journey, which happens across Google tools that customers are already actively using, rather than within a dedicated AI chatbot. Brilliant execution all around by Google.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Maybe it's time for OpenAI to adopt UCP.