Why Google’s Universal Cart Means Brands Must Sell to AI, Not Humans

Google made one of its biggest moves yet in agentic commerce in May when it introduced Universal Cart, a persistent shopping cart that spans Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail. The deep integration allows shoppers to discover, compare, and buy across merchants through Google’s ecosystem.

For consumers, the pitch is convenience. For retailers and brands, the risk is much bigger, as Google moves closer to owning the shopping decision before the consumer ever reaches a retailer’s site.

Anthony Ferry, CEO of Wayvia (formerly PriceSpider), sees Google’s Universal Cart as a major warning sign for brands and retailers. He said it changes who owns the consumer relationship, with Google building another walled garden where consumer decisions occur within its ecosystem, out of sight of brands.

"Retailers face an existential threat. As Google and Amazon win consumer loyalty through sheer convenience, the direct relationship between retailers and customers is crumbling. Retailers that can't command their own audience risk becoming essentially fulfillment centers and low-margin warehouses," Ferry told the E-Commerce Times.

Visibility of Shoppers' Insights at Risk

According to Ferry, brands risk sleepwalking into dependency on a handful of AI-powered platforms. They are losing visibility into how shoppers make decisions and losing control over where and how consumers search for products.

"Smart brands will counteract this by doubling down on their owned media, where they still get first-party data, direct consumer relationships, and shoppable experiences they control. Everyone else will be renting visibility from whichever holds the keys to the platform,” he said.

Wayvia is an e-commerce intelligence platform that helps brands track their products online, manage pricing, and turn marketing campaigns into easy buying experiences for shoppers. The company has expanded its tools to help brands adapt to modern artificial intelligence (AI) shopping assistants.

Ferry warned that retailers risk losing control of the mid-funnel, reducing the brand's website to little more than a transactional endpoint. Retailers live and die by customer lifetime value (LTV) and repeat purchases. Losing the initial data touchpoint breaks that pipeline.

He suggested that marketing tactics must change when AI agents filter options for consumers. With the black box problem in agentic commerce, brands won't know whether they lost a sale due to price, algorithmic bias, or supply chain metrics.

Unwrapping Agentic Commerce's Black Box Issues

We asked Ferry to explain why Google’s Universal Cart is a problem for brands and retailers. He also shared his views on how AI shopping platforms are changing who owns the consumer relationship.

E-Commerce Times: In a world with Universal Cart, what happens to the retail website's traditional role as the primary venue for discovery and product comparison?

Anthony Ferry: The retail website does not go away, but its role changes pretty dramatically. For the last decade, retailers have been trying to pull shoppers into their own websites, apps, and loyalty programs, where they can shape the basket.

If the shopper starts on your site, you can control merchandising, show the promotion, recommend the bundle, promote the private label, capture the email, and bring that customer back. Universal Cart moves a lot of that behavior back into Google’s world.

The cross-sell and upsell issue shows up there. A retailer loses a visit, plus the add-on purchase items. If Universal Cart becomes the place where the basket is assembled, retailers may have to earn that consideration within Google rather than their own aisle.

How does Universal Cart change the retailer's role in the shopping journey?

Ferry: Retailers like Amazon or Walmart had less reason to advertise their own house brands on another platform’s shopping environment. The point of a house brand was to win inside its own environment. If Google owns more of the pre-purchase conversation, a retailer’s private label starts to look more like a manufacturer’s brand.

If the basket is built inside Google, the retailer's website becomes less the front door and more the fulfillment layer. The product page has to be readable by AI. Inventory has to be accurate. Pricing has to be current. Reviews have to support the use case. The checkout path has to work.

If Google manages a persistent cart across Search, YouTube, Gemini, and Gmail, how does a brand optimization strategy shift?

Ferry: In this new persistent model, brands must focus on ensuring their products are visible, accurate, and easy for an AI system to recommend and place in their customers' baskets. That sounds simple, but it changes a lot of the work behind the scenes.

Product data, retailer availability, reviews, and the quality of the retailer path become more important. If the AI sees two products, it has every reason to select the one that is cheaper, better reviewed, easier to understand, in stock nearby, and available through a cleaner checkout path.

Does search engine optimization effectively become agent optimization to ensure a product gets placed into that universal cart?

Ferry: In practice, yes. I would not make the term sound more complicated than the work actually is. SEO was about helping a page get found. This is about helping a product get chosen.

How is AI's shopping process different from that of a human purchaser?

Ferry: An AI shopping assistant is not browsing as a person does. It is trying to solve a shopping problem. If a shopper asks for sunscreen that will not irritate a kid’s skin and can arrive today, the AI does not need a vague brand story. It needs a clear product, strong proof, accurate inventory, good reviews, and a clean path to purchase. That is where brands need to focus.

When a consumer shops fully inside the Google ecosystem, what first-party data are retailers missing, and what are the long-term consequences for their CRM and retention efforts?

Ferry: The valuable data is everything that happens before the order is placed. Without it, the retailer has a much thinner view of the customer. These include the shopper's query, products compared, other retailers considered, expectation of a price drop, and the role of faster delivery.

These other missing factors also matter: Did Google show a cheaper substitute? Did reviews push one product ahead of another? Did a loyalty perk matter? Did the shopper choose the retailer, or did Google effectively choose it?

That is the data retailers use to understand demand. It is also the data they need for CRM, loyalty, personalization, and retention.

How can retailers create shopping experiences compelling enough to pull consumers away from Google's Universal Cart?

Ferry: A brand or owned experience cannot be a brochure anymore. It cannot tell the brand story and then send the shopper into the dark. It has to help the shopper make a purchase. That means answering real product questions and giving the brand visibility.

The owned experience also needs to offer something beyond convenience: exclusive products, early access, better bundles, subscriptions, product education, community, service, and loyalty that actually changes behavior.

Will brands be forced into a race to the bottom on price to be the chosen option by Google's persistent cart?

Ferry: Commodity brands are the most exposed. If an AI assistant sees five products that look basically the same, it will start using the cleanest tiebreakers. Price, delivery speed, reviews, and availability. That is bad news for brands that lack a clear reason to be chosen.

Most shoppers are not emotionally attached to where they buy batteries, paper towels, shampoo, medicine, pet food, or beauty basics. If the AI finds a good product, a good price, and a good delivery window, that trip may never happen.

But I do not think this means every brand gets dragged into a race to the bottom. Differentiated brands still have room. If the brand has a specific use case, strong reviews, clear product content, reliable availability, and a real repeat-purchase relationship, the AI has more to work with than just price.