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Ashish Gupta, VP/GM of Merchant Shopping at Google: UCP Deep Dive, Nerding out on Product Data Feeds, the importance of Product-Level Context PLUS Google's Vision for Agentic Commerce

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Mar 19, 2026

Ashish Gupta, VP/GM of Merchant Shopping at Google and Engineering Fellow, leads work on agentic commerce and UCP. He dives into why UCP was created, its open ecosystem design, and how it aims to go beyond checkout. The conversation covers discovery, conversational product data, merchant readiness, and how infrastructure choices will shape AI-driven shopping.

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INSIGHT

Why Google Built UCP Now

UCP emerged because shoppers use AI surfaces for deep shopping tasks and agents are now capable of delegating actions.
Google designed UCP as an open, ecosystem-wide protocol to connect agents to businesses across discovery, purchase, and post-purchase.

INSIGHT

Openness Is A Design Principle

Openness is central to UCP so it can serve all businesses, payment providers, and agents rather than one closed platform.
Google positions itself as a matchmaker, aiming for standards that let many agents deliver value to shoppers and merchants.

ADVICE

Start With UCP Discovery Endpoints

Add discovery into UCP and expose catalog search/lookups so agents can find products programmatically.
Google already added initial discovery capabilities in the GitHub repo and is working with partners to extend them.

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This episode explores the shift from traditional search and ecommerce flows into a new agentic commerce environment where shoppers are using AI surfaces to discover, compare, and increasingly delegate parts of the buying journey.

Ashish explains what Google was seeing internally that led to the development of UCP, why the protocol was designed to be open and ecosystem-wide, and why the ambition goes far beyond checkout. He also shares how Google is thinking about discovery, conversational product data, merchant readiness, and the long-term role of AI across the shopping journey.

For retailers, brands, marketplaces, and commerce tech teams, this conversation is a helpful window into what Google believes is changing now, and what foundations businesses should be investing in before the market fully shifts.

Highlights

How Google’s large-scale ad and data systems shaped his approach to commerce
Why UCP emerged now, and the two major trends that inspired it
Why Google believes agentic commerce needs an open, ecosystem-wide standard
Why the future of UCP extends far beyond checkout
How discovery is starting to take shape within the protocol
Why richer, more conversational product data matters in AI shopping experiences
What retailers need to do now to improve visibility on AI surfaces
How Google is thinking about the relationship between agentic commerce and advertising
Why agentic commerce is still early, but already moving from concept to reality

Agentic commerce is still early, but this conversation makes one thing clear: the infrastructure decisions being made now will shape who gets discovered, considered, and chosen in the next era of shopping.

Timestamps
2:32 — Welcome and introduction to Ashish Gupta

5:01 — Building Google’s data infrastructure and declarative querying at scale

9:43 — AI at Google before the current wave

11:32 — What it means to be an Engineering Fellow at Google

14:00 — Balancing technical leadership and operational leadership

16:10 — Why Ashish moved into merchant shopping

17:41 — The origin story behind UCP

24:58 — Why Google chose an open protocol approach

27:50 — Responding to skepticism around Google’s commerce efforts

32:30 — Discovery, catalog search, and where UCP expands next

35:39 — Multi-item and multi-merchant cart support

37:43 — New protocol capabilities and partner onboarding

38:42 — Why product data quality matters more in AI shopping

43:22 — How shoppers are using AI surfaces in more complex ways

47:47 — Agentic commerce and advertising

50:10 — Where agentic commerce may go from here

51:46 — Closing thoughts and where to follow Ashish

👉 Connect with Ashish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishgupta98/
👉 Check out UCP announcement: https://www.retailgentic.com/p/flash-googlenrf-announces-universal

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