Google Tests Direct Flipkart Buys Through Gemini in India — SkimNews

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- Google is testing a 'Buy' button on select Flipkart product listings in Gemini and AI Mode, routing users directly to a Flipkart-branded checkout flow without leaving the AI interface.
- The test is limited to some users and a narrow product set — smartphones, electronics, and mobile accessories — while rival listings from Amazon appear alongside but lack the direct-buy option.
- A broader rollout is planned for later in October, ahead of India's festive shopping season when Flipkart and Amazon compete fiercely for online shoppers across more than a billion internet subscribers.
- Google holds a minority stake in Flipkart after investing about $350 million in a 2024 funding round led by Walmart, giving the commerce partnership a financial backbone.
- The Flipkart test uses a Flipkart-branded checkout rather than the Google-hosted flow tied to the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) Google introduced earlier this year — the underlying technology powering the test is undisclosed.
- Google and rivals including OpenAI are racing to move AI from answering shopping queries into executing transactions, per the source's framing.
Why it matters: Google's commerce AI is closing the loop from recommendation to checkout, and its $350 million minority stake in Flipkart gives that experiment a privileged partner. The pre-festive-season timing gives Flipkart a direct-buy edge inside Gemini that Amazon listings surfaced alongside it don't yet get — a competitive asymmetry that pressures Amazon to either match the integration or lose AI-mediated transactions during India's biggest sales window.
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