Google's AI Shopping Push Is Better for Business Than It Is for You

Today, Google announced three new AI shopping features, all centered around keeping you engaged with its AI throughout the entire shopping process. On the one hand, these features have the potential to make shopping more convenient—on the other hand, maybe lowering friction isn't the best idea when it comes to spending money. Beyond selling you on convenience, these features all share something else in common—helping businesses up their clickthrough rates.

It starts with AI Mode and Gemini, which can now access all the same information as Google Search's shopping tab. That means you'll start to see product cards alongside your AI answers, which you can click on for a bunch of shopping links, or hit a checkmark to compare the selected products. They won't show up on every question, but on about half of the prompts I tried, I got the option to spend money right away.

Then, if you're still not sure you want to buy yet, now you can have Google's AI robocall local businesses for you to check on product availability and pricing, as well as any deals or bundles you might not know about. There are a few caveats—businesses can opt out, and Google will avoid calling them at odd hours or too frequently—but the idea is that if you're on the fence, you can have an AI help you know which stores to go to.

Finally, when it comes time to actually purchase whatever you're shopping for, you can have Google's AI check out for you. This feature is an extension of the existing price tracking feature, and will add a "Buy for me" button to any price tracking notifications you get from certain participating stores, like Wayfair, Chewy, Quince, or certain Shopify merchants. You'll get a link to the product you'd be buying from your notification, and the price will be pulled from that, so the company says you won't have to worry about the AI getting the price wrong. Instead, it's just supposed to remove any hesitation you might feel from having to enter your shipping or payment details into a checkout form.

I won't deny that, when holiday shopping, I usually won't turn down assistance. But a continued refrain I had while hearing about these new features was "Why?"

Personally, I'm mortified at the idea of sending employees at local businesses robocalls to deal with. And if I'm researching products, while it might be helpful to be able to involve an AI so I could ask specific question, I think I'd still prefer full access to all the filters and hundreds of links available in Google Shopping.

The big thing for me, though, is agentic checkout. While I'm actually willing to trust Google that it won't make mistakes (and you do get a reference ID to hand to support in case it does), I'm also not sure why I'd want to go right from getting a price drop notification to having an AI spend money for me. It doesn't take long to fill out a checkout form, and while Google Shopping is a useful price tracking tool, it's not the only one around. I'd probably want to comparison shop a bit more before committing, at which point I might as well fill out the checkout form myself.

But if you think about these features from the perspective of a business, the "why" behind all of this suddenly becomes a lot clearer. Turning people browsing web listings into actual paying customers has been a problem for about as long as the internet has existed, and all of these features introduce new opportunities for impulse purchases at every step of the buying process, while also erasing the opportunity for users to get caught up on a larger selection of options.

It's not a conspiracy. Google charges companies for sponsored slots and ads, and the more people that buy products using a Google service, the more companies will want to pay for those. And for what it's worth, Lifehacker makes money on affiliate links. I won't deny that companies needs money, and that people need to buy gifts.

What this does do, however, is reduce the friction that might pop up in between having an idle thought to buy something, and opening your wallet. While it plays at being a research buddy, it takes control out of your hands, obfuscates sources and other options, and instead encourages you to spend your money as quickly as possible, while discouraging skepticism.

As someone who writes reviews and best-of lists, I like to think that my readers are a bit more savvy than that. Convenience is great, but taking the extra few minutes it takes to find an actual human opinion from someone who's used the product, or to double check that the price Google is serving you is really your best option, could save you from hours of pain down the line.

Like most AI tools, there's potential here. But as much as AI will try to convince you that it's just some neutral buddy, remember that there are business motivations behind everything the companies behind these chatbots do. Keeping your whole shopping search in the same ecosystem as a company that's main profit still comes from ads and e-commerce probably isn't the best way to get your information.

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