Google’s Universal Cart shopping tool launches in the US

The new shopping tool is available in the U.S. across Google Search and the Gemini app. Google on Thursday said “Universal Cart,” a tool that lets users collect and monitor products they find across search and in the Gemini app, is now available to U.S. users. The company first previewed the tool at Google I/O in May. The idea is to make online shopping easier to manage. Find something you like, save it to your cart, and move on. When you return later, your items and shopping progress are still there, so you don’t have to hunt down the same products or start over. Universal Cart can collect items from multiple retailers, turning it into a central hub for browsing and keeping track of potential purchases.

Google says the cart can also help shoppers stay on top of deals and availability. The tool can send notifications when a saved product’s price drops or when an out-of-stock item becomes available again. The tool is also designed to offer more tailored help during the shopping process. Google says it can take credit card perks into account when helping users choose how to pay, and also surface relevant promo codes. Checkout is tied to Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP, an open standard the company introduced earlier this year. UCP is designed to