“We Have Definitely Been Cooking”: Ashish Gupta, Google’s VP of Merchant Shopping, on Everything Google Just Shipped at GML

“We Have Definitely Been Cooking”: Ashish Gupta, Google’s VP of Merchant Shopping, on Everything Google Just Shipped at GML

May 20th at Google Marketing Live, right before my high-level strategic chat with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google (you can read/listen to that one here [https://www.retailgentic.com/p/nick-fox-googles-svp-of-knowledge]), I got to sit down with Ashish Gupta [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishgupta98/], VP & GM of Merchant Shopping at Google. If the Nick Fox conversation was the 30,000-ft strategic view of where Google is taking AI Mode, AIO, and the answer engine, this one with Ashish is the exact opposite. It’s the on-the-ground tactical roadmap for merchants. Ashish is literally one of the people building the thing, and he’s telling you what to do about it before holiday. This interview was recorded right after his fireside chat with Augustina Sartori at Google HQ. On that panel, he laid out the 4 things merchants should do right now:  1. Product feeds 2. Data strength 3. AI campaigns,  4. Agentic infrastructure (i.e., UCP).  We get into all four. In this interview we discuss: * The 6 new conversational attributes — just launched, live now in the supplemental feed (FAQs, related items, popularity rank, document links, additional variants, item group). Why they exist, how to use them, and the “best sales associate in your store” analogy for how AI surfaces are now expected to behave * UCP’s expansion into new verticals — food delivery and travel. Why now, and why the “U” in Universal Commerce Protocol is doing real work * Loyalty in UCP via Google account linking — your Ulta $10 reward shows up at checkout. Critical for merchants who don’t allow guest checkout * Data strength — bringing first-party loyalty data into Gemini / AI Mode surfaces so loyal customers see more of the brands they love * AI Max & P-Max and the new ad formats showing up across AI surfaces (and YouTube) * AI Performance Insights coming to Merchant Center — the new Share of Voice metric, why the funnel doesn’t behave like a normal funnel (it can actually widen deeper in), and how Google is moving from a “click/keyword” company to an “answer engine” company * The keyword vs. long-tail question — in an answer engine world, is there even such a thing as a “popular search term” anymore? (Ashish’s answer is interesting) What’s neat about doing these back-to-back is you get both layers in one day. Nick’s interview is about framing: how Google thinks about AI Mode vs. traditional Search, the Innovator’s Dilemma, the ~5 prior attempts at “transactions on Google” and why this one is different, and trust at the intersection of answer engines and AI ads. Ashish’s interview is the merchant-facing manifestation of all of that: here’s exactly what’s shipping, here’s what to put in your feed, here’s how we’ll measure you. Read both together and you get a pretty complete picture of what Google is doing with agentic commerce in 2026. Timestamps:  01:41 — Episode intro: Ashish Gupta returns, context on GML, the merchant vs. consumer org structure at Google 04:39 — Interview begins (on-site at Building 100 Bayview) 05:18 — Breaking news: the 6 new conversational attributes are live 06:32 — The "best sales associate" analogy for AI surfaces 08:09 — Popularity rank: how merchants can signal without giving away proprietary data 09:37 — Related items, additional variants, and item group attributes 11:01 — UCP expansion into new verticals (food delivery, travel) — why now 12:32 — The 4 things merchants should do: feeds, data strength, AI campaigns, agentic infrastructure 13:02 — Data strength explained: first-party loyalty data in AI surfaces 14:08 — Loyalty in UCP via Google account linking (the Ulta $10 example) 16:01 — AI campaigns: AI Max, P-Max, and showing up across AI surfaces 17:46 — New ad formats and YouTube shopping 18:04 — UCP on YouTube and what's next (Gmail?) 19:19 — AI Performance Insights & the Share of Voice metric 20:17 — Discover / Explore / Purchase: Google crosses from search engine to answer engine 21:34 — Why the AI funnel doesn't behave like a traditional funnel 23:20 — Long-tail vs. keyword: do "popular search terms" still exist in an answer-engine world? 25:05 — What Ashish is most excited about 26:06 — Outro 👉 Connect with Ashish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashishgupta98/ 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along: 📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai 📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

Nick Fox, Google's SVP of Knowledge and Information, Live Google Marketing Live Interview

May 20th at Google Marketing Live, I was very fortunate to be able to sit down for ~20 minutes with Nick Fox, SVP of Knowledge and Information at Google. Earlier in the day he had a fireside chat with Ben Smith, Editor-in-Chief Semafor. Later that afternoon after I had time to reflect on this conversation, I had a ~20min interview with Nick. It’s not often you get to sit down with one of the top execs at a ~$5T company so I worked a lot of topics into a short time. As always, I try and approach this with you, the audience in mind. What would YOU ask? I had just completed a super tactical Agentic Commerce / UCP/Universal Checkout chat with Ashish, so for this one flipped into high-level strategic mode. In this interview we discuss: * How does Nick ‘frame’ AIO/AI Mode/Gemini * Will AI Mode/AIO and traditional search transition from traditional to AI Mode or will they merge, or ‘other’ down the road? * Google’s had ~5 previous attempts from the Froogle era to today for ‘transactions on Google’ - why is this the moment they are getting super serious about it? * Navigating the Innovator’s Dilemma * Finally, managing trust at the intersection of ‘Answer engines’ and ‘AI Ads’ Timestamps: 01:45 — Scot introduces Nick Fox, Google SVP of Knowledge & Information 02:31 — “Search in the AI Era” and Google’s AI strategy 03:21 — What this interview covers: AI Mode, Gemini, ads, and commerce 04:00 — Why Google believes transactions will work this time 04:33 — The innovator’s dilemma and defending Search 05:16 — Ads, trust, and AI-generated answers 05:52 — Interview begins live from Google Marketing Live 06:23 — How Gemini is “supercharging” Google’s advertising products 06:50 — Ads inside AI Mode and agentic commerce tools 07:11 — Universal Commerce Protocol + Universal Cart 07:26 — Nick Fox on 23 years at Google and the AI era 08:07 — Why Google sees tech shifts as growth accelerators, not disruptions 08:53 — Search vs AI Overviews vs AI Mode vs Gemini explained 09:12 — Google’s “two main products”: Search and Gemini 10:16 — Reinventing the Search box for the AI era 11:01 — Will AI Mode eventually become the default? 12:10 — Google’s philosophy: combining AI + the web 13:00 — Why Google believes users still want the web 13:03 — Gemini “Spark” and agentic capabilities 13:43 — AI agents running 24/7 in the background 14:14 — Using Spark to manage complex tasks like event planning 14:50 — The future of Gemini in the agentic era 14:59 — Google as an economic engine and ad marketplace 15:42 — The innovator’s dilemma and Search resilience 16:04 — “Lean into the technology shifts” philosophy 16:52 — Why Google didn’t see AI as a business-model threat 17:17 — Google’s ad model as a marketplace between users and marketers 18:18 — Why Google Shopping is different this time 19:02 — Why AI enables better shopping confidence and discovery 19:43 — AI helping users get further down the purchase journey 20:24 — Trust, ads, and AI-generated answers 21:04 — Google’s principles for ads in AI experiences 21:31 — “Ads are clearly labeled, separate, and relevant” 21:58 — Closing thoughts and wrap-up 👉 Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickthefox/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickthefox/] 👉 Learn more about Google Marketing Live: https://www.googlemarketinglive.com/digital [https://www.googlemarketinglive.com/digital] 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along: 📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai 📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

Suresh Ganapathy, Senior Director of Product, Consumer Shopping: Live Google I/O Interview

Today at Google I/O, in her part of the larger keynote, VP/GM of Ads and Commerce, Vidhya Srinivasan announced a raft of Agentic Commerce items with the anchor new feature being Universal Cart. After Vidhya’s keynote comments, I was left with these questions that I know merchants will have too: * Googlers talk about Universal Cart being available on surfaces like Gmail and YouTube - what’s that actually look like IRL? What are the use cases that merchants can think about and start experimenting with? * Universal Cart is coming this Summer - that’s typically June/July/August - that’s a long window in AI-time, early/mid/late Summer? * I haven’t heard Google, at least the Agentic Commerce team, talk about AG2 in a while, and suddenly it popped back up in the context of the new consumer agent called Gemini Spark. What’s that all about that. * Loyalty (via identity linking) was part of the UCP features announced back on March 19th (details here [https://www.retailgentic.com/p/alert-google-quadruples-down-on-ucpagentic?utm_source=publication-search]) but kind of missing here? Even though if you read Vidhya’s blog post very carefully it says that Universal Cart uses “loyalty information”, but it’s not like the Copilot UCP-based loyalty linkage we saw with Target back on April 22 (here [https://www.retailgentic.com/p/flash-microsoft-dumps-acp-for-ucp?utm_source=publication-search] if you missed it). That’s a lot of questions - I only had 30mins with Suresh, so had to pick and choose, but we covered some good ground. The good news is I have two more interviews scheduled for Wed 20th at Google Marketing Live and will work them all in. Subscribe, engage and stay tuned for more great Google I/O content coming at you all week!  👉 Connect with Suresh Ganapathy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureshsganapathy/ 👉 Learn more about Google I/O: https://io.google/2026/ 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along: 📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai 📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

Elizabeth Lachhar, EVP Americas at Rezolve AI: Is Your Ecommerce Experience Already Outdated?

In this episode, Scot sits with Elizabeth Lachhar to unpack Rezolve AI’s end-to-end agentic commerce platform, including its closed retail-trained LLM, Brainpower, and modules across search, discovery, conversational commerce, checkout, and loyalty. A lot of the agentic commerce conversation focuses on offsite experiences like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI shopping agents. But there’s another major shift happening onsite, where retailers are rethinking search, merchandising, conversational commerce, checkout, loyalty, and personalization for an AI-native world. Elizabeth brings a deep enterprise background from Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and more, and now works with retailers, brands, food service, hospitality, and B2B companies navigating this transition. Highlights  * Why onsite agentic commerce matters just as much as offsite AI shopping agents * How Rezolve AI approaches search, merchandising, conversational commerce, checkout, loyalty, and geolocation * Why closed, retail-trained LLMs may matter for hallucination, security, and enterprise trust * How conversational commerce can help retailers move beyond flat, 2D ecommerce experiences * Why B2B discovery is a major agentic commerce use case * How loyalty, memory, and past purchases can create better personalization * What retailers are asking about right now: security, compliance, fraud, ROI, and partner strategy * Why Elizabeth believes agentic commerce is already here, not years away * What Generation Alpha could mean for the future of shopping experiences by 2030 Agentic commerce is also about rebuilding the onsite experience so retailers can understand, personalize, transact, and convert in a world where consumers expect commerce to be faster, smarter, and more conversational. Timestamps  00:00 — Introduction to Retailgentic  01:34 — Meet Elizabeth Lacchar of Resolve AI  04:18 — Elizabeth’s background at Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and more  07:14 — Why she joined Resolve AI  09:54 — What Resolve AI does  10:32 — The end-to-end agentic commerce platform  11:29 — Quick service, geolocation, and hospitality use cases  13:25 — Search, discovery, merchandising, and visualization  15:08 — B2B catalogs and complex SKU discovery  17:12 — Why agentic commerce is different from legacy site search  18:11 — Resolve’s closed LLM, Brainpower  20:26 — Checkout, wallets, crypto, and international payments  26:02 — Loyalty, data, and the full customer lifecycle  29:50 — Brain Suite, Brain Commerce, Brain Checkout, and Brain Assist  31:09 — Resolve AI’s customer mix  34:22 — Elizabeth’s role as EVP of the Americas  35:55 — Vibe check: where retailers are in adoption  38:31 — Is agentic commerce a race to the bottom?  40:28 — Fraud, bots, security, and guardrails  42:35 — Selling agentic commerce across enterprise teams  46:26 — Predictions for holiday and 2030  49:41 — Where to learn more about Resolve AI 👉 Connect with Elizabeth Lachhar: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-lachhar/ 👉 Learn more about Rezolve Ai: https://www.linkedin.com/company/airezolve/ 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along: 📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai 📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic

Microsoft Joins Retailgentic! Michele Fisher & Atanu Ghosh on Copilot, Agentic Commerce, Loyalty, Ads, and Does Conversational Discovery Changes Everything?

In this episode, we sit down with Michele Fisher [https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelekfisher/] (Global Director, Business Strategy for Retail & CPG) and Atanu Ghosh [https://www.linkedin.com/in/buildingai/] (Director of Agentic Commerce & AI Innovation), who sit at the intersection of Azure AI, Copilot, and real-world retail and brand Agentic Commerce implementations. This conversation dives into how Microsoft is thinking about agentic commerce as a full operating model shift, not just a feature or channel. From Copilot shopping to data infrastructure to ads inside LLMs, the discussion connects the dots between: Highlights  * Conversational discovery is fundamentally different from search: The way people talk about brands inside AI systems looks nothing like traditional keyword behavior, and most companies have zero visibility into it. * Agentic commerce is not one thing, it’s an operating model shift: Microsoft defines it broadly: agents participating in discovery, decision-making, and transactions, not just checkout. * Copilot + catalog + data = the new commerce stack * Ads are changing from persuasion to evaluation: Agents don’t care about creative. They evaluate structured data, trust signals, and relevance. * Loyalty becomes infrastructure, not a program * The “frontier firm” is the North Star: A future where humans and agents work together across workflows, not just AI acting as an assistant. * Protocols like UCP matter more than people realize: Open standards enable discoverability across surfaces and prevent fragmentation in agent-driven ecosystems. * The funnel is collapsing If your brand is still thinking about traffic as the starting point, you’re already behind. In an agentic world, discovery happens before you ever see the user, and increasingly, without them. Timestamps 00:00 – Why brands have zero visibility into conversational discovery 01:50 – Scot’s “Big 6” podcast goal and Microsoft joins the list 04:00 – Michelle & Atanu backgrounds + roles at Microsoft 10:00 – What agentic commerce actually means (and why definitions vary) 14:00 – Microsoft’s agentic commerce stack: Copilot, agents, data layer 18:00 – The “Frontier Firm” and human + agent workflows 20:00 – UCP, protocols, and why openness matters 23:00 – Loyalty, identity, and friction in agent checkout 28:00 – Ads in agentic commerce: from persuasion to evaluation 33:00 – First-party data vs. conversational behavior data 39:00 – Why most retailers aren’t ready (and what they need first) 45:00 – The real blocker: operating models, not technology 46:30 – Where to learn more + how leaders are consuming information now 👉 Connect with Michele: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelekfisher/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelekfisher/] 👉 Connect with Atanu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/buildingai/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/buildingai/] 👉 Learn more about Microsoft in AI: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/azure-ai-foundry-blog/the-future-of-ai-harnessing-ai-for-e-commerce---personalized-shopping-agents/4386980 🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along: 📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai 📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates: https://www.youtube.com/@Retailgentic