Is Google already playing a different game?

This week, a Swedish court ordered Google to pay SEK 14.3 billion in damages to price comparison site Pricerunner, after concluding that the company had abused its dominant position by favouring its own comparison shopping service. It is one of the largest competition law judgments ever handed down in Sweden, and marks the end of a legal battle that has been running for well over a decade.

On the surface, the ruling is about Google’s past. But just weeks earlier, Google gave us a glimpse of what its future ambitions in commerce might look like, and the next discussion about what is allowed or not looks to be even more complicated.

At Google I/O in May, the company introduced Google “Universal Cart” and continued to build on its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) — an open standard intended to let AI agents interact directly with commerce platforms. Neither announcement generated the same headlines as Gemini’s latest AI capabilities. Yet, taken together, they may prove just as important for e-commerce.

Because there is much more going on here than a smarter shopping cart.

For more than twenty years, Google has been perhaps the most important place for shopping journeys to begin. Consumers search, compare, click and eventually arrive at a retailer’s website. That, together with an ever-evolving Google shopping model has made Google one of the most influential companies in commerce without ever becoming the retailer itself.

Universal Cart hints at something different.

Google still won’t be the retailer. But rather than being content with simply directing internet traffic, Google is beginning to position itself inside the buying journey. Products from multiple retailers can be gathered into a shared experience where AI helps compare prices, validate compatibility, monitor stock levels and eventually assist with completing a purchase. The individual features are impressive and interesting enough by themselves, but the bigger story lies underneath. This is not just listing links to other companies’ PDPs. This is infrastructure. It is Google building a commerce layer designed as much for AI as for humans.

And that distinction matters.

Retailers have spent years optimising websites, checkout flows and digital experiences for human visitors. AI agents, however, navigate commerce differently. They rely on structured product data, APIs, inventory feeds and clearly defined product relationships. Suddenly, capabilities that might have once been considered backend plumbing become strategic assets.

When AI becomes a natural participant in shopping, retailers may find themselves optimising not only for Google Search, but for Google’s agents.

And that brings us back to the Pricerunner ruling. It’s about how Google’s influence over commerce largely came from controlling discovery. The next chapter may not only be about discovery. It may be about who becomes the interface between consumers and retailers once AI starts making decisions alongside us. It may increasingly be less about who gets to list products and prices as the result of traditional search, such as Pricerunner. Much has been said about AI becoming the new starting point for e-shopping. This change addresses that, but is also about merging it with “traditional” e-commerce behaviour as well as adding new functionality on top such as price comparisons, compatibility checks, combining checkout between multiple vendors etc. 

That does not mean Google is repeating history. The legal questions surrounding Google Shopping versus the opportunities presented by AI-enabled commerce are different. But the timing is difficult to ignore. Just as one chapter of Google’s commerce story reaches a legal conclusion, another appears to be beginning. 

For everyone else, sitting back with popcorn isn’t really an option. The more relevant question is whether retailers are preparing for a world where AI agents become part of every purchase.

When (not if) that future arrives, the winners won’t necessarily be those with the best commerce experiences. Those will still matter. But they will no longer be enough. Tomorrow’s e-commerce leaders may instead be the companies with the most AI-ready commerce architecture, the richest product data and the ability to make all of it accessible to AI agents.

At SQLI, this is exactly the kind of shift we help retailers prepare for — from product data and architecture to the commerce experiences built on top of them. Get in touch if you’d like to discuss what AI-ready commerce could mean for your business.