[00:00:00] Phillip: Hello, and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip. And I'm Nicole. And we are here live at Google Marketing Live 2026 and very excited to sit down and talk all about the announcements that have happened here, some of the insider knowledge that we have gained already here on this, our first GML, and to get unpacked on some of that. We have Ashish Gupta, the VP and GM of Merchant Shopping at Google. You're going to break it all down for us. Welcome to the show, Ashish.

[00:00:31] Ashish: Thank you. We're very excited to be here.

[00:00:34] Phillip: You lead the global team building foundational commerce infrastructure for Google, and that includes Google Shopping Graph, UCP. But the underlying mission of it all is to deliver seamless journeys. We've talked a lot about that for the last year, year and a half, especially since UCP came out. Tell us a little bit about what you have been working on and what some of the innovations that we heard about this week are.

[00:00:58] Ashish: Yeah. So what we've been working on, at the very big picture thing, is how can we continue to deliver really delightful experiences for our shoppers across the board, and as part of that, also how can we help our businesses, because it's always about the ecosystem for us. As part of this, we are very, very excited to have many, many new announcements over the last couple of days. In particular, from where we are seeing some of the shoppers coming on, for shopping, is they are more and more coming to these AI surfaces with their new shopping, all kind of shopping needs, and as part of that, they are also... we are seeing a transition towards the agentic commerce where the shoppers are more and more delegating some of these tasks to the agents, and what we have been very, very excited about announcing some of these is the expansion of the Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP for short. What Universal Commerce Protocol is, it is like a foundational building block for the agentic commerce across the entire web. We announced it earlier this year with some of our founding partners, and we've been very excited to see how the entire industry has rallied behind it.

[00:02:16] Ashish: And at GML, we announced expanding the protocol on various different dimensions. First of all, just on the protocol itself, we are now going even beyond shopping. We are now working with industry leaders to bring it to entirely new verticals, including hotel bookings as well as local food delivery services. So that is one area we are very excited about. We have lots of strong partners we are working with on that. We are also bringing a lot of these UCP-powered experiences across Google. In particular, we are now allowing shoppers to buy multiple items at once on Google surfaces. This is a lot more intuitive in terms of how people generally shop. It's also great for merchants. It allows them to get a larger basket value. We are, in fact, even giving more flexibility and choice to shoppers and merchants, that shoppers can now move all the items which they have in Google Universal Cart directly to the merchant site and can transact later on the merchant site itself. So there are lots of new capabilities which are coming with UCP.

[00:03:31] Phillip: I think one of the key questions there is the interaction between a Universal Cart and... obviously, the merchant record piece is such an important part of the merchant owning the customer at the end of the day. The ability to transfer the cart is an important part of the innovation. I think the question's just going to come down to, does that require the merchant to have an opt-in experience? Do they need to integrate UCP? Tell us a little bit about the underlying need for the merchant to really get the full UCP Universal Cart experience, that they can benefit from this new consumer behavior?

[00:04:13] Ashish: Yeah. So first of all, no matter how the transaction happens, like, no matter how and where the consumer actually completes their purchase, the merchant is always the seller of record. Yeah. Whether they do it right on Google on the Universal Cart or they transfer the items. Secondly, when we talk about, like, these integrations, merchants are the ones who are deciding how they want to integrate. So this is actually built in into how we build the Universal Commerce Protocol. The Universal Commerce Protocol allows you to have different capabilities built in. There's a checkout capability, for example, there's a cart capability, and merchants can decide which capabilities they want to build on their end and how they want to integrate with Google on those capabilities. So again, merchants can decide do they want to build a checkout capability or do they want to build the cart capability, and lots of merchants who we also had talked about today at GML, many of them are building both these capabilities so that they can give the most choice to their shoppers on how they want to buy things.

[00:05:18] Phillip: And some of those experiences may come along with the capabilities of the platform, like maybe a launch partner like Shopify. It may give... maybe a little bit, some of these early launch partners, they've had access to these tools and they have the capabilities within the house. I think some of the questions that will come from our listening audience is how do they get going and how do they do it quickly?

[00:05:42] Ashish: Yeah. So we are obviously working with a number of partners as we bring in any of these new capabilities. What we are also... so first of all, the protocol itself is open source. Sure. So everybody can access the protocol, they can start integrating and learning about it, they can start building the right APIs for it, and again, it's agnostic to any single company, so which means that other agents and many businesses and platforms are adopting it. So that can happen already. In terms of Google integrations, with any of these different experiences, there we are working with a select group of partners right now as we bring some of these capabilities to life. But at the same time, we are also working on, like, how can we simplify the onboarding process for merchants across the board, and we are going to soon launch some of these capabilities, more capabilities, into Merchant Center, where it's like a very simplified flow for any business to come and integrate with us.

[00:06:39] Nicole: I think the network of partners that you have working together with you on this is really impressive. One of the big things you really touted here was some of the surprising new names added to that list, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft. What role are they playing in your work? How are they helping to shape this, and what is the future, kind of, forward-looking goal for this group as you all work together to develop this?

[00:07:02] Ashish: Yeah. So our vision for the Universal Commerce Protocol has always been that it has to work for the entire ecosystem. It has to work for everybody. It has to work for all platforms, like all agents. It has to work for all merchants and businesses. It has to work for all payment providers. So again, having them all coming on board is a great testament to, like, the fact that this is actually resonating with the entire industry, which is what we are seeing. Secondly, when we... there's a lot of complexity and nuance in any of these systems. Like, when you talk about shopping domain itself, even if you talk about just, like, checkout functionality, there's just so much complexity. Like, you add the item to the cart, you are doing account linking, you are adding your loyalty benefits, you are adding, like, your, say, coupon codes, then you are doing this, you are adding your shipping details, you are figuring out, like, which is the best shipping option, which is the best payment option, then you complete your purchase. If anything... you...

[00:08:01] Phillip: Didn't mention tax. That's a nightmare.

[00:08:03] Ashish: Taxes, absolutely, all the local and regulations and everything. If anything breaks down in this whole purchase funnel, then the transaction falls through. So there's a lot of complexity which we need to make sure that the protocol actually captures, and captures it in a way that is simple, that is scalable, right? And that is where all of these partners come in so that we can bring in a combined knowledge and understand the nuances of all of these different journeys, the user journeys. And again, it's not only about payments. Again, when we talk about UCP, it's about the entire shopping funnel, from discovery to purchase to post-purchase. And as I said, now we are even expanding outside of shopping, right? Like, we are also expanding... like, it's a commerce protocol. So we now have, like, amazing partners across the board for hotel booking and food ordering services. And, again, the main idea is how can we capture the nuances but also build something which works for the entire ecosystem.

[00:09:02] Nicole: Yeah. That sounds like a really big job. I'm curious. You've been working on this for some time now. You've announced expansions. They're coming, though. How can we see this right now in the wild? Like, what can we experience of UCP now at the user level?

[00:09:22] Ashish: Yeah. Some of these experiences are actually already live right now. So now if you go to, like, AI Mode on Search, or you go to Gemini and search for something from the partners we have already integrated, including, like, Wayfair and Etsy, you can actually buy those products right on these surfaces. And we are bringing this with all of our other partners as well. We are bringing in a lot more capabilities and a lot more functionality into our systems in the coming months.

[00:09:47] Phillip: We've been tracking the consumer relationship with AI over the past, you know, year, year and a half. And the more that they've interacted with agents and even more AI-powered solutions from companies like Google, the more that these experiences felt, like, more personal, more organic, and more habitual than novel. And so I feel like our relationship to technology is starting to change maybe societally, if you'll allow me to be a little bombastic there. So I don't know, like, at a macro level, what are consumers saying about their experiences with AI across the different stages of the shopping journey that inform how you are thinking about your relationships with your partners and how you're guiding the product?

[00:10:30] Ashish: Yeah. So on the consumer side, again, it goes back to our vision. Our vision has always been how can we build the most delightful experiences for a shopper, and we have been investing in these AI-driven shopping experiences for a long time now. Like, if you think about the product search on Lens, or if you think about, like, Try On, I mean, these are, like, amazing AI experiences shoppers... and really now, with more and more shoppers adopting AI for shopping on these conversational surfaces, there's a huge opportunity here for us, because the shoppers are going beyond, like, just discovering products on these surfaces. Now they are actually doing, like, deep research. They are comparing products. They are figuring out, are these items available in the local store? Where can I get the best, say, price for this product? Or any of the other options, right? So they're going a lot more in-depth as part of these conversations. So that is where we are now focusing on, like, how can we continue to improve the experience from a shopper perspective on these surfaces and also help the brands to get discovered. That is where some of the other announcements which we had at GML come in, like we talked about the new conversational attributes, for example, as part of product feeds, because again, the product feeds play such a big role in terms of the AI system understanding and having the information about the product and understanding the nuances of the product, so that they can match the shopper's intent, so that, again, it helps with brand discovery and everything.

[00:12:09] Phillip: Give me a little bit more about the conversational attributes. Define some of those for the audience.

[00:12:15] Ashish: Yeah, for sure. So just stepping back a bit, right, like, again, what we are seeing when the shoppers are coming to the AI surfaces is the queries are getting a lot more in-depth, a lot more nuanced, right? And the big opportunity here now, from a merchant perspective and from a shopper perspective, is for us to really understand and anticipate the shopper's intent and be able to match that with the information we have about the brands, about the products and everything. We already get a lot of this product data from merchants across the world. We have, like, a Shopping Graph, which has over 60,000,000,000 product listings. It is the most comprehensive catalog of products, but again, to match the nuances of the queries which are coming in the AI surface, we need even richer data, so that is where the conversational attributes come in. So an example of a conversational attribute which we launched is, like, just answers to frequently asked questions. This is something which the brand obviously already knows, like, what are the people asking about this, or things like, what are the related items? Or what are the substitute items if this particular item is out of stock? Right? And having that information given to the AI system, it means that the AI system has this knowledge about the products so that it can have a lot more informative conversation with the shopper.

[00:13:37] Nicole: What other things should merchants be accounting for as they try to evolve with this shift in consumer behavior? So you've created this conversational attributes to give more, like, rich data, rich information to the AI answer engines. What else should merchants be accounting for as they're building toward this future?

[00:13:58] Ashish: Yeah. When you think about, like, building for this future of agentic commerce, it actually all boils down to focusing on the fundamentals. And when we talk about fundamentals, we have put down, like, a recipe of, like, what the merchants and the brands can do to get their fundamentals right. One big part of it is, again, going back to your feeds, right? Conversational attributes is one part of it, but even, like, existing attributes, like giving key titles, giving your shipping speed, giving your lifestyle imagery, the rich lifestyle imagery which you have, those are just very fundamental. That is what powers all shopping experiences on Google, including the new AI services. So that's one. Secondly, the big opportunity for brands and merchants is to unlock the power of their own first-party data. So when shoppers are coming to these new AI experiences, they are really looking for tailored options which cater to their own unique preferences, and as part of that, the better understanding we have about the relationship which the brands have with the shoppers, the better it is. Like, for example, all the loyalty program benefits and who is loyal to you, having that information with the AI systems helps you deliver, like, really personalized experiences to your shoppers. The third thing I would say is, like, for brands to help scale their performance, they can leverage some of the new AI-powered campaigns, which we talked about at GML as well. Last but not the least, again, like, to be ready for this future of agentic, integrating with UCP and making sure you're ready for having agents connect to your businesses is another amazing unlock.

[00:15:53] Phillip: One thing that I wrote about last year, and it's, sort of, a departure from what we're talking about here, is it's like there's two paths, right? Which way, Western man? Right? We have this one future wherein we're sharing an open web with agents, and the agents are browsing the open web as if they're, you know, a proxy for human browsing. And then we have a UCP future where it is its own lane for agentic, you know, browse and purchase and payment rails. That is not a human path. Right? It is an agentic path. And so I'm curious. Do you see a future where it's still a mix of both? Or, because one feels faster than the other from an agentic perspective. But if an agent is a proxy for human behavior, won't we still have agents browsing the open web in the future?

[00:17:00] Ashish: So, potentially, the way we see it is shoppers will shop anywhere, and when they do decide to shop on Google, we want to make sure we have the right experiences for them, and we are able to give a platform where businesses can reach those customers on Google surfaces. So that is where we have been investing, whether it is, like, all of our AI shopping experiences or whether it's the Universal Commerce Protocol or everything else is geared towards that. In terms of what it means for the merchants and brands, again, as I said, shoppers will come through all of these channels. Sure. They want to reach them wherever they are, and that is why the brands have been so interested in also integrating with some of these experiences, because they do want to reach the shoppers on Google or on other surfaces.

[00:17:55] Nicole: Yeah. I mean, we didn't actually detail it, but that is one thing that's so interesting about the Universal Cart, because we're not just talking about Google Search. We're talking about shopping from Gmail, shopping from YouTube. There's been a lot of talk here about the potential for shopping on YouTube, which is, kind of, that TV commerce ideal that I think we've been chasing for years, like being able... you see your favorite actor wearing something that you love, and you can buy it right then. So this is more than just in the Google Search surface. Mhmm. It's really expanding out through all of the Google products, which is really what's especially exciting, I think.

[00:18:34] Phillip: If I had a dollar for everybody that asked me yesterday where I got my shirt that I was wearing to Google Marketing Live, I mean, we've got to put that on the YouTube. Yeah. That's got to be merchandise. But, yeah, I... was there a question there? I think I hijacked it. But that's completely right. Right? Is the surfaces by which people are encountering the product inspiration are many, they're not few.

[00:18:59] Ashish: Yeah, absolutely. Because people are discovering new products on all surfaces, whether it is on YouTube, or when they search on Google Search, or when they are on Gmail, they are finding new options and new products everywhere, and what Universal Cart allows them to do is, like, save those products and put those into their cart so that now the cart actually comes into action for them. It's an intelligent, powerful cart which can help the shoppers to identify, like, say, if there's incompatibility between the products they are trying to buy, or if the product is out of stock, when it comes back into stock, or if there are, like, price changes which are happening. So it's an intelligent cart which can help you and it can carry through all our different experiences across Google.

[00:19:51] Phillip: This has been such a great conversation. We always ask our guests, you know, what's in store for the future, although very few of them are actually building it. So I guess you have an unfair advantage. But a big theme for us for the year, organizations are becoming more autonomous. Right? So we're in this era of the autonomous organization, the autonomous enterprise. So autonomy is really important, but we're also seeing that the consumer is empowered to be more sovereign. Right. They can do a lot more for themselves that they used to rely on institutions for. Right. Whether that's financial insight and independence, more health care, we're seeing lots of that. I'm curious, when you give a consumer the ability to put shopping on autopilot or give them the ability to define really clear rule sets around the things that they want, and it can execute those without their direct involvement, how that leads to more autonomy and more sovereignty, it puts a lot more power in their hands. Where do you think that that plays out in the next two, four, or five years? Where do you think that that leads?

[00:21:09] Ashish: Yeah. So two to four or five years is a very, very long time for some...

[00:21:14] Phillip: Oh, for sure. In this era? It's eons.

[00:21:17] Ashish: Given how everything is moving, particularly also in the shopping space and the agentic space, like, again, two years is a very, very long time. But the place, how I see it evolving, like, given, like, where shoppers are more and more coming to AI surfaces, they are ready to delegate some of these tasks, you can think about a future where they have, like, a personal shopper who is intelligent, who is powerful, it is proactive, it is personalized, it knows what you want, it knows when you want it, and it's just working for you all the time and it's fun to work with. I mean, that is, again, the vision of how we are going to bring some of these things together, and a big part of all of this is how do you build the right kind of trust and right kind of, like, the privacy and security and all of those aspects in the system, and how to make sure it works for the entire ecosystem, right? Because it cannot just be about the shoppers, like, we need to make sure it works for the retailers and the brands and the payment providers. So how to build this whole ecosystem is what we are focused on right now.

[00:22:23] Phillip: Yeah. Well, I guess good news for all the Swifties and the Beyoncé Beyhives. They, you know, maybe they have a chance in this future to actually get some tickets around here. Ashish Gupta, thank you so much for joining Future Commerce. Would love to check in with you next year and see how things are going.

[00:22:40] Ashish: It's been a pleasure.

[00:22:41] Phillip: Thank you so much.