Google’s Universal Cart. Screen images are simulated. Credit: Google Google launched Universal Cart in the US on Wednesday, a cart that sits inside Search and the Gemini app, holds products from multiple retailers and takes the payment through Google Pay. Its own roadmap names Canada, Australia and the UK for expansion, and never mentions the EU.
Google has put a shopping cart inside Search and the Gemini app that holds products from rival retailers and takes the payment. It launched in the US on Wednesday. Google’s own roadmap names Canada, Australia and the UK next, and never mentions the EU. Universal Cart runs on the 60 billion product listings in Google’s Shopping Graph, the company said in a post by Suresh Ganapathy.
Its I/O announcement in May said checkout would reach Canada and Australia within months, and the UK later. The cart keeps items from different retailers in one place, sends alerts on price drops and restocks, and reads Google Wallet to suggest which card to pay with. It also surfaces promo codes. Participating merchants include Nike, Sephora, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walmart, Wayfair and Shopify sellers.
Each remains the seller of record, and handles confirmations and support. Checkout runs on the Universal Commerce Protocol, released as an open standard in January. Google’s Agent Payments Protocol, which lets agents buy within preset limits, arrived in September 2025 with more than 60 partners including PayPal and Mastercard. That May plan put the US launch in the summer.
It arrived on 15 October. Europe’s absence is not an oversight. The Commission issued Google an €890M DMA fine in July, €460M of it for self-preferencing in shopping, hotel, transport and sports results. Google was given 60 days to stop, or face daily penalties of up to 5% of Alphabet’s average worldwide turnover.
Its answer was to make search worse. Nick Fox, Google’s search chief, said in September that the changes “degrade the user experience for Europeans“. A Stockholm court separately ordered Google to pay Klarna’s PriceRunner nearly $2B in July, on the Commission’s 2017 Google Shopping decision. EU fines against the company now exceed €9B.
Google already ships agentic features everywhere but Europe. Gemini Spark, the product it said would get the payments protocol first, reached more than 160 countries in July and is unavailable in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK. No reason was given. A cart inside Google’s own results, holding rival retailers’ listings and taking the payment, is the self-preferencing question in a newer form.
Six comparison-shopping services are already lining up for damages, from Idealo’s €465M award to Moltiply’s €2.97B claim. Google has not said whether the cart will reach the EU. Also tagged with Get the TNW newsletter ✕ Close Get the TNW newsletter Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.
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