Google's Universal Commerce Protocol aims to make shopping AI-native | Hacker News Reader

Google's Universal Commerce Protocol aims to make shopping AI-native

14 pointskddsingh15 comments

Google just published details about its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard aimed at making shopping work natively with AI agents instead of websites. The idea is to standardize the entire commerce flow—product discovery, pricing, checkout, payment, and post-purchase—so an AI agent can complete purchases directly without custom integrations for every merchant. Merchants remain the seller of record, but expose capabilities through a common protocol, letting agents compare options and execute checkout across many stores. If this takes off, it weakens marketplace lock-in (including Amazon’s) by shifting discovery and checkout out of proprietary UIs and into AI-driven intent flows, similar to how open web protocols reduced the power of early internet portals.

View on HN

As someone who doesn't really use AI, this could still be really useful, because it would make it much easier to create product search engines - a sort of DIY, ad-hoc Amazon for whatever product you're trying to buy.

Dont dream. Even if this project is successful, the protocol may be open but the API keys will only be available to Google, OpenAI & co through complicated deals. You'll never be able to use them.

A good idea in theory. When I was at uni, i designed a protocol for that, with the vision of having individual stores, "commerce article aggregators", and user apps that can query either stores directly or aggregators, all using the same interface, same user preferences and filters.

Soon taking 30% of your commercial transaction I comes just because they can...

If AI is so smart why does it require special APIs for it to use?

Is it that weird that AI agents (and arguably also humans) are faster and more efficient to use if standardized APIs/UIs are available?

https://ucp.dev/

Won’t this destroy any small seller who can’t compete on price?

Not necessarily as gemini might take other variables in consideration. But it certainly will make a lot of intermediaries (between brands and consumers) suffer. This is a huge threat for Amazon.

Is "AI" new "Blockchain"?

Is [insert new tech] the new "Blockchain"?

Hell naah... yet another attempt to create yet another walled garden. We've seen enough now.

This will create less of a walled garden.

It will make a different walled garden. The walls will be made of fees.

Nop.. look at the initiators who will "call" this protocol to initiate a transaction. It's exactly the same play as Apple Pay or Google Pay. Initially framed as helpful and open, until the momentum builds up and companies are dependent, then switch it to squeeze more and more of transactions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com