Search for a Flipkart product inside Gemini in India and a buy button can now appear where a link used to sit.
Tap it and a Flipkart-branded checkout opens without leaving the AI interface, according to people familiar with the arrangement and an experience seen by TechCrunch. The pool is deliberately small: a subset of users, and a short list of products covering smartphones, electronics and mobile accessories. Everyone else still sees listings with no way to purchase.
One person familiar with the plan said a broader version arrives in October, aimed at India’s festive shopping season. Google declined to discuss details, saying only that it tests features meant to help people find and connect with businesses.
Two things sit behind the experiment. One is the Universal Commerce Protocol, an open standard introduced this year so agents can carry a shopping trip through to payment, and Flipkart was named this month among merchants joining what Google calls agentic shopping in India. The other is money: Google took a minority stake in the retailer through a 2024 funding round, investing about $350M.
Amazon listings in the same interface carried no purchase option, which points to merchant-by-merchant deals rather than a general capability switched on across retail.
