FLASH: Google's "Buy for Me" Agentic Checkout Feature Release is Imminent...
We've been waiting patiently since Google I/O in May for this to come out. It looks like we're getting very very close...
In the last 24-48hrs, some changes were made to Google AI Mode around the product cards that we have detected. These changes indicate to us that Google is putting up the infrastructure that will support ‘Buy for Me’. Before we dig in, it’s been a long 142 days since Google I/O on May 20, so here’s a quick reminder of what they said was coming….
Recap of Google’s “Buy for Me” Agentic Checkout
If you want to see the deep dive, it’s here. In a nutshell, the way Google demonstrated this feature live back in May:
You find a product you want (using product card style UI)
You ‘track price’
You receive an alert
In that alert it has a ‘buy for me’ option (If the merchant accepts Google Pay)
You can then authorize an agent (**Note this is NOT a hosted checkout like ChatGPT Instant Checkout, this is a completely different implementation where an agent completes the checkout at the merchant’s site for you)
The Agent notifies you the product was purchased.
Back in May I pointed out that this system had two pretty big issues that would dramatically limit it’s use:
Why is it triggered only off a price change - why can’t I ‘buy for me’ right from search results? (like everywhere else on the planet)
Limiting this to Google Pay is severely limiting - less than 10% of merchants take Google Pay online.
Why am I so concerned about this?😱
I have a lot of scar tissue with Google and marketplaces. They always have cool ‘Buy on Google’ ideas, but then they ‘fumble on the 1 yard line 🏈’ - meaning the feature ends up being significantly hobbled by some seemingly random decision that doesn’t make a lot of sense, and almost guarantees the feature won’t be adopted. My pessimistic side worries these two limitations are going to really limit this feature so significantly that it’s going to dramatically limit consumer adoption.
The generous/optimistic perspective here is they want to take it easy, get it out in this limited way, and then will expand the aperture. I’m unfortunately biased by those past experiments, but I do recognize that Google now faces the most formidable competitor they have in 27
Ok, But What the Heck’s New?
First, there’s a fancy new 3 by X matrix of product cards (in this example there are 12, so 3x4) with enhanced support for complex variations in the offer pop-up→
The ‘Buy for me’ clues come when we hit track price which you see on the right under the product hero image. That pulls up:
We’ve noticed that in ‘AI Mode’ when you click on Track price, there’s now variations in the price tracking AND this new blurb about “Buy for me”
It says:
“Buy for me may be available through Google Shopping’s price tracking feature, and saves you time by placing an order on your behalf with your saved Google Pay info. If your desired price is met, you’ll receive a notification you can click on to receive the option to use Buy for me. “Learn more”
The first thing you notice here is that unfortunately in that short paragraph, they have confirmed that both of the limitations I’m concerned about (Track price→Buy and Google Pay) are still limitations. 🥺🥺🥺
Hmmm, Let’s Learn More!
When you click the ‘Learn more’ link you are taken to a full-blown help page (within Google Pay) that has some juicy content for us to dig into:
So far, this is exactly what Google said at Google I/O. Continuing on…
Note that now they are making it very clear that Google is not the merchant-of-record, it’s 100% the merchant, similar messaging to ChatGPT Instant Checkout.
Just the FAQs
Continuing on there are two sections of frequently asked questions:
Nothing too surprising here -I wouldn’t expect a 1.0 feature to attempt promo codes and loyalty rewards, that’s a 2.0 level feature. There’s a notification tab.
“Fix issues with Agentic checkout” - Hmmm… 🤔
Now this is interested. Reading some tea leaves here, it seems they are concerned about ‘Agentic checkout doesn’t work’ and ‘Wrong item was purchased’.
To me this indicates that perhaps I’m wrong, the Track Prices/GPay limitations are perhaps there to purposely minimize the usage of this feature in the early days to see how many of these ‘doesn’t work’ and ‘wrong item’.
Conclusion
As best we can tell, the last step, actually seeing that ‘price alert met’ pop-up with the magical ‘Buy for me button’. But we’re watching this very closely as it feels like we are days if not hours away from our first Google-powered agentic checkout.
Stay tuned and Happy Agentic Commercing!