Marketplace Briefing: Amazon joins Google-backed shopping effort, suggesting a shift in AI strategy
This is the latest installment of the Marketplace Briefing, a weekly Modern Retail+ column about the ever-changing e-commerce marketplace landscape. More from the series →
When Google introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) in January — an open standard designed to power AI-driven shopping — one major player was noticeably absent from its list of retail partners: Amazon.
Now, just a few months later, the e-commerce giant has joined the technical council overseeing the open standard, according to an April 24 announcement. Other new members include Meta, Microsoft, Stripe and Salesforce. They join earlier members like Google, Shopify, Etsy, Target and Wayfair. The group helps guide how the protocol is developed.
Google’s UCP is meant to make it easier for AI tools to help people shop. Right now, retailers have to build separate integrations for each AI platform. UCP aims to fix that by creating a single standard that lets AI tools access things like product listings, prices and checkout systems across any retailer. The protocol currently powers checkout within Google’s AI Mode and Gemini App.
The addition of Amazon is notable given its absence earlier this year, when Google introduced UCP at the National Retail Federation conference. At the time, industry analysts told Modern Retail the protocol could pose a potential threat by creating new ways for shoppers to discover products outside of Amazon’s marketplace. More than half of online shoppers in the U.S. start their product searches on Amazon’s sprawling web store. In theory, UCP could shift the starting point of online shopping away from platforms like Amazon and toward AI tools.
It is still unclear whether agentic commerce will take off in a meaningful way. Even if it does, it remains to be seen whether it will disrupt Amazon’s core retail business. In the meantime, Amazon’s decision to join the UCP Tech Council suggests the company wants a seat at the table as these systems develop, while continuing to build its own AI shopping tools.
“UCP is ultimately trying to create this foundational layer to power all these different experiences,” said Juozas Kaziukėnas, an independent e-commerce analyst. “We don’t know what it’ll lead to, but they officially have the Amazon approval stamp, so we’ll see where that goes.”
Amazon declined to comment beyond the announcement.
In September, OpenAI announced Instant Checkout, which was designed to let users buy products directly within ChatGPT. OpenAI also introduced the Agentic Commerce Protocol, developed in partnership with Stripe, an open source that ostensibly competes with UCP. But OpenAI has since pulled back from parts of its shopping ambitions by phasing out Instant Checkout. Instead, purchases will be completed within third-party apps that plug into ChatGPT. To Kaziukėnas, OpenAI’s shopping pullback means that UCP is now the most viable standard for retailers to plug into.
“UCP has emerged so far as perhaps the winning standard among those two,” he said.
Amazon did not publicly announce support for open agentic commerce standards like UCP until last week, but its Tech Council representative, Greg Smith, has been contributing to the project since late February, proposing documentation changes and reviewing others’ work, according to his GitHub profile.
For the most part, Amazon has focused on building its own AI tools. Last month, Amazon announced it was expanding Shop Direct, an AI-driven program that lets shoppers find and buy products from other retailers. Last week, the Seattle-based company announced a new feature, called Scheduled Actions, that lets customers set up recurring shopping tasks, such as restocking household essentials, tracking new product releases or suggesting gift ideas ahead of key occasions.
At the same time, Amazon has tried to limit how outside AI tools access its data. It has blocked some AI bots from scraping its website, a move meant to protect its product listings and advertising business, Modern Retail previously reported. In November, Amazon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity over its new Comet browser, which lets users ask an AI agent to find and buy items on Amazon.
Kaziukėnas said Amazon joining UCP does not mean it is changing course. Instead, he said, the move may be about staying involved in case the standard becomes widely used.
“If this does emerge as an industry standard, Amazon may see a future where it’s either ingesting data from this protocol or participating in shoppable experiences through Gemini and other AI chatbots,” he said.
In October, CEO Andy Jassy said the company expects to work with outside AI agents in the future. But he has also made clear that Amazon believes shoppers will prefer to use tools built by retailers themselves. He previously said most AI agents lack personalization and often provide inaccurate pricing and delivery estimates.
Since then, Amazon has been cozying up to OpenAI. In November, OpenAI signed a $38 billion deal with Amazon Web Services. In late February, Amazon said it would invest $50 billion in OpenAI. And Amazon and OpenAI also agreed to jointly build custom models for Amazon’s engineering teams to support its consumer-facing products.
Last week, Amazon said it would invest as much as $25 billion in Anthropic, in addition to the $8 billion it has already invested in the artificial intelligence startup.
“Amazon seems increasingly willing to partner across the AI ecosystem with all of the major players,” said Sky Canaves, a retail analyst at eMarketer.
That willingness to partner now extends to Google’s UCP.
“This is a manifestation of ‘keep your friends close, your enemies closer,’” said Sucharita Kodali, a principal analyst at Forrester.
While Google is frequently the starting point for shoppers, it has struggled to become the destination where they actually complete their purchases, often losing that ground to competitors like Amazon. Google tested similar embedded checkout tools before ultimately scrapping them. Its own “Buy on Google” feature was discontinued in 2023.
“For Amazon, they learn what is happening with another major player who is upstream in the shopping discovery funnel,” Kodali said. “Both would like to own more data, and that is where they compete and will always compete. But this gives them an opportunity to ‘work together’ in an industry-building way.”
But that cooperation may be temporary. Despite the hype around agentic commerce, it is far from certain that consumers will adopt AI tools for shopping, or which platforms will emerge as winners.
“If ‘agentic commerce’ actually takes off, I don’t expect a partnership to last,” Kodali said. “It will then be an arms race.”
What I’m reading
- Amazon added a “join the chat” feature to its AI audio product summaries. (Amazon)
- EBay has been experiencing technical difficulties since Sunday. (Retail Dive)
- Online retailer Vinted, an eBay competitor, is now valued at €8 billion ($9.4 billion). (Bloomberg)