How Does an AI Agent Actually Buy Something? Google Just Published the Spec.

This is a submission for the Google I/O Writing Challenge

Google I/O 2026 said the word "agent" more than any other noun across both keynotes. Agents that code. Agents that research. Agents that plan your day. The dev community wrote about Antigravity, Gemini Spark, managed agents, agentic search.

But here's what nobody asked: how does an AI agent actually buy something?

Not "recommend a product." Not "show a link." Actually complete a purchase. Add to cart, select shipping, pay, confirm. On behalf of a human, talking to a merchant's backend, without ever loading a webpage.

Google shipped the answer at I/O. It's called the Universal Commerce Protocol. Almost nobody in the developer community noticed.