Happy Wednesday marketer, you've got work to do. Assuming there's still work to be done.

Posted on: 14 January 2026

For those of us who despise the word "funnel" and everything it represents, or rather everything we're told it represents, what happened last Sunday at the National Retail Federation in New York feels like a small act of revenge. Sundar Pichai announced that checkout will now happen inside Google. Not on your site. Not on your beautifully optimised Shopify store. Inside Google. Customer searches, AI chooses, Google Pay completes the transaction. Done. Your site? Nobody sees it.

And you, dear e-commerce marketer, what exactly will you be doing?

All those competencies you've built over the years: conversion rate optimisation, checkout flow, cart abandonment, A/B testing the colour of the "Buy Now" button. All of that. Do you know what it becomes when checkout no longer passes through your house? Archaeology. Artefacts from an era when customers actually arrived at your site.

But let's take this in order, so you can understand precisely how stuffed you are.

Google has launched the Universal Commerce Protocol. They presented it as an "open standard" for "agentic commerce", with Shopify, Walmart, Target all enthusiastically playing co-developers. Lovely. Democratic. All together now.

Pity that "open standard" is the elegant way of saying "we write the rules, you follow them". I've seen this film before. Twenty years ago with digital cinema. The Hollywood majors invited everyone to the table to define technical standards. Exhibitors, projector manufacturers, trade associations. All stakeholders, all with a voice. In the end, the specifications protected the majors' content, and exhibitors found themselves spending hundreds of thousands of pounds per projector on a standard they hadn't actually written. By the time you realise, you've already signed the purchase orders.

But back to you, marketer. What's happening is simple: Google is moving from controlling discovery to controlling the transaction. Until yesterday, they owned the "I'm searching for something" moment. From tomorrow, they own the "I'm buying it" moment too. And you, in this scheme, where exactly are you?

Nowhere.

The customer will never see your site. Won't see your brand storytelling. Won't see your curated reviews. Won't see the cross-selling you've optimised for months. They'll see a product, a price, a button. Inside Google. And if you want them to see your product instead of your competitor's? You pay. It's called "Direct Offers", announced alongside UCP. You pay to show discounts "at the moment of intent". Pay-to-play, like Amazon Marketplace. Only now it's everywhere.

And the data? Ah, the data. Those precious customer insights you used to personalise experiences, for retargeting, for building audiences. That data now belongs to Google. Not inferences from search behaviour. Complete transactional data: what they bought, how much they spent, what they compared, what they rejected. The most valuable raw material in digital marketing. And it's no longer yours.

Google says they won't take commissions. Of course. Google has never taken commissions. Google takes data and sells visibility. That's the model. It hasn't changed, it's just expanded. Before, they sold visibility in search. Now they sell visibility at checkout. And you, if you want to exist, pay.

I can already hear the objection: "But Shopify is a co-developer! Shopify protects merchants!"

Shopify protects Shopify. Being in the room where rules are written is better than having them imposed from outside, but it doesn't mean the rules are written for you. It means Shopify positions itself as an indispensable intermediary in the new ecosystem. You, merchant on Shopify, are the product that Shopify brings to the table for negotiating leverage. Not the beneficiary.

A consultant, Richard Crone, said the most honest thing about this whole affair: "If checkout goes to Gemini, the merchant loses the last touchpoint." The last one. What comes after, you no longer control. And once lost, it doesn't come back.

The point of no return? Approaching faster than you think. Not because of technology; that always changes. But because of human behaviour. Kahneman and Thaler explained that the brain follows the path of least resistance. Google has eliminated the resistance. Search, buy, it arrives. Without leaving the app. Without thinking. Without choosing where to buy, because the AI has already made that choice for you.

And every transaction completed inside Google is a habit that consolidates. Every piece of data that accumulates is a competitive advantage that grows. Human laziness, that unstoppable force, works twenty-four hours a day for whoever controls the default interface. And the default interface is Google.

So, marketer, what do you do now?

Your old question was: how do I optimise checkout? The new question is: how do I exist in a world where checkout isn't mine?

Your old question was: how do I build a funnel? The new question is: what do I do when the funnel doesn't pass through my house?

Your old question was: how do I collect customer data? The new question is: what do I do when Google has that data?

I don't have answers. Nobody does; the game has only just started. But I can tell you what not to do.

Don't believe that "open standard" means democracy. Whoever writes the code writes the rules.

Don't believe that the conditions negotiated by Walmart apply to you. You're not Walmart. You're what Walmart brings to the table for leverage.

Don't believe you have time. Consumer behaviour, once changed, doesn't reverse. Those who get used to buying without leaving Google won't go back to navigating between sites comparing checkouts. Why would they? It's more effort.

And don't fall into paralysing cynicism. "Google always wins anyway." True, probably. But there are always niches, spaces, strategies. Finding them requires first accepting that the old game is over.

Last Sunday wasn't the announcement of a new tool. It was the announcement of a new paradigm. Tools get added. Paradigms replace.

That stuff you knew how to do? Conversion rate, A/B testing, checkout optimisation? It's not that it was wrong. It's that it applies to a context that's evaporating. It's like being the finest swordsmith when guns arrive. Your skills are real. The world where they mattered, less so.

I've spent enough time watching technological transitions to know how this ends. Those who understand in time adapt. Those who wait to see what others do find themselves investing in a standard they didn't write, wondering how it happened.

The answer is always the same: it happened while you were looking elsewhere, convinced the game wasn't changing.

Now you know. What will you do?