Google released a new shopping feature that confirms what we talked about in last week’s Agentic Browser Wars essay: Google is moving from search to action. The update lets users skip the cart step and go directly to checkout from Google Shopping. Google calls this “agentic checkout.”
The feature uses AI to pre-fill key purchase details, and one tap sends the order to the merchant for confirmation. Google is presenting this as a holiday convenience, but the path forward is obvious.
If checkout shifts from brand sites into Google’s flow, your data, your upsells, and your sponsored placements will matter less (or not at all). Agentic shopping focuses on making choices, not on showing products. The agent becomes the decision-maker. The platform that owns the agent owns the transaction. If agentic shopping becomes a thing, Google will have the final piece of the attribution puzzle. I’m not sure what happens then, but it is the logical end state of agentic shopping.
If you’re interested in having agents find your goods and services, now is the time to test your product feeds, structured data, and inventory accuracy inside Google’s ecosystem. If the agent cannot parse your data, your offerings will not appear the way you want them to.
The calculus here is easy. Review your cost of acquisition and your margin exposure when checkout happens off-site and decide if the economics work for you.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.