Google kills the checkout
Why this is the beginning of the end for e-commerce as we know it.
Google's new agentic checkout isn’t just killing pages, it’s killing entire business models.
Google introduced "Shop with AI mode".
You can now shop and buy without ever visiting a retailers website.
This isn’t about payments.
It’s about who owns the customer. And Wall Street noticed: Shopify dropped 𝟱% within hours of the announcement.
Here's why this isn't just another AI feature – it's the beginning of the end for e-commerce as we know it.
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Why This Changes Everything
What happened: Google launched "Shop with AI mode" powered by Gemini 2.5, enabling direct checkout from search results. Users can now discover, compare, and purchase products without visiting any retailer website.
The brutal math: This disrupts multiple layers of the $5.5 trillion e-commerce stack:
$138B annually in payment processing fees
$7.8B in checkout optimization tools
$37B in e-commerce fraud prevention
Billions more in landing page optimization, cart abandonment solutions, and conversion tools
Why it matters: Most analysts are fixated on the payments angle. They're missing the real disruption: intent capture.
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When transactions happen at the moment of discovery, the entire customer journey collapses. Google now controls what was previously a multi-step, multi-platform process that retailers spent billions optimizing.
The strategic shift: This isn't about making checkout smoother – it's about who owns the customer relationship. Previously, Google sent traffic to retailers who then owned the conversion and transaction. Now Google owns the entire funnel from search to sale.
What changes immediately:
SEO costs will skyrocket as organic discovery becomes even more critical
Product pages and checkout flows become irrelevant overnight
Product data quality becomes your primary competitive advantage
Customer loyalty shifts from brands to AI agents
Attribution models break completely
The wake-up call: Companies spending millions on conversion rate optimization, cart abandonment tools, and checkout experiences just saw their investment become worthless. The new battleground is AI discoverability – how well your product data feeds Google's recommendation engine.
What's coming: Google says this launches "in a few months" with major questions still unanswered around agent identity verification, fraud prevention, and merchant onboarding. But the direction is clear: Google wants to capture the transaction value they've been sending elsewhere for two decades.
This isn’t a UX update.
It’s a rewrite of the $5.5T e-commerce stack. And the AI – Google – now owns the funnel.
The companies that adapt fastest to AI-first commerce will survive. The rest become inventory suppliers to Google's storefront.
What's Next
Smart operators should audit their Google Shopping feeds immediately. Your product data quality just became your primary marketing channel.
Start treating Google Merchant Center like your new homepage – because for many customers, it now is.
The $5.5T e-commerce rewrite has begun. Position accordingly.
Take care, Marc
We help companies like Avalanche, Near, or MoonPay with industry-leading thought leadership campaigns to attract institutional clients. Interested?
Super interesting to see how this plays out
Some thoughts on Google's Agentic Shopping:
1. Someone needs to really define what "owning the customer" means. It is a concept thrown around a lot. But I still can't figure out what it really means.
2. If we remove all those costs from the stack, vendors should be happy. And if we remove all that friction from the purchasing funnel customers will be happy. We've noticed that the more friction is removed the more people are willing to spend.
3. It will change the traffic to websites - but it will just make each conversion more valuable. The big risk here is how much Google will increase the cost per click, they stand to pick up the slack in the stack.