--- title: "Google starts taking payments inside Search in the US; Europe, where its fines top €10 billion, is left out" description: "Universal Cart, live in the US on October 15, moves checkout from retailers' sites into Search and the Gemini app while merchants stay seller of record. The EU is missing from the roadmap, where the same position drew a €460 million fine in July and a damages queue is growing." publisher: "The Inference" section: "Platforms" published: 2026-10-17T01:38:32.811Z modified: 2026-10-17T01:38:32.811Z canonical: https://theinference.org/article/google-starts-taking-payments-inside-search-in-the-us-europe-where-its-fines-top-10-billion-is-left-out language: en keywords: "Google, Antitrust, Digital Markets Act, Payments, AI Agents, Europe" --- # Google starts taking payments inside Search in the US; Europe, where its fines top €10 billion, is left out > Universal Cart, live in the US on October 15, moves checkout from retailers' sites into Search and the Gemini app while merchants stay seller of record. The EU is missing from the roadmap, where the same position drew a €460 million fine in July and a damages queue is growing. Google [switched on Universal Cart in the US on October 15](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/universal-cart-launch/): one cart inside Search and the Gemini app that holds goods from [Nike](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/nike), Target, [Walmart](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/walmart) and [Shopify](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/shopify) sellers, tracks them across the Shopping Graph's more than 60 billion product listings, and takes the payment through [Google](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/alphabet) Pay while each merchant stays seller of record [1][2]. Canada and Australia come within months and the UK later, but the roadmap never mentions the EU, and that absence is the story [1][3]. It is not an oversight [1]. ## The checkout now sits inside Google's ad machine Under the cart is a business model. Purchases run on the Universal Commerce Protocol, a checkout standard Google opened in January, with the Agent Payments Protocol above it to let an AI agent buy inside preset spending limits [1][3]. At Marketing Live in May, Google wired that checkout into the ad formats that pay for the page, including [Demand Gen campaigns and shopping ads on YouTube](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/google-expands-universal-commerce-protocol-and-launches-new-agentic-shopping-tools/ar-AA23F5BI), and put buy-now-pay-later from [Affirm](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/affirm) and [Klarna](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/klarna) inside Google Pay [4]. The store keeps fulfillment and support; the discovery, the advertising and the moment of payment stay with Google [2][4]. ## The roadmap stops where the Digital Markets Act starts In July the European Commission handed Google its first fine under the Digital Markets Act, the EU's gatekeeper rulebook [5]. [The €460 million core of it punished ranking Google's own shopping, hotel and transport results above rivals'](https://www.livemint.com/companies/google-hit-with-1-billion-eu-fine-over-search-play-store-breaches-heres-why-11784810224081.html) [6]. Non-compliance now risks [daily penalties of up to 5 percent of average daily worldwide turnover](https://thenextweb.com/news/eu-google-dma-fine-talks) [5]. Google's September fix stripped instant prices and availability from European search, and Nick Fox, the company's search chief, [said the changes "degrade the user experience for Europeans"](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/google-says-europe-is-making-it-roll-out-degraded-travel-search-results/) [7]. A cart inside Google's results, holding rival retailers' goods and taking the payment, is that finding rebuilt as a product. *Chart: **The DMA fine is the smallest of Google's four standing EU penalties** Column chart of four European Commission fines on Google by year of decision: Shopping 2017 at €2.4B, Android 2018 at €4.1B, ad tech 2025 at €3.0B, and the Digital Markets Act penalty in 2026 at €0.9B, the smallest of the four.* *European Commission competition fines on Google, by year of decision, in € billions. Android is shown as reduced on appeal; the €1.49 billion AdSense fine annulled by the EU General Court is excluded. Sources: Bloomberg via Mint; The Next Web. [6]* ## The damages queue is the real bill The fines are the smaller half of the bill. [EU penalties on Google already top €10 billion](https://thenextweb.com/news/google-rivals-damages-dma-fine) [6][8]. The private suits are where the money moves: [a Stockholm court has ordered Google to pay €1.7 billion with interest to PriceRunner](https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/general/google-ordered-to-pay-klarna-s-pricerunner-1-7-billion-over-search-abuse/ar-AA26ZhNv), the comparison site owned by the payments group Klarna [9]. Klarna's shares jumped 11.5 percent on the ruling [9]. Idealo has already won in Berlin, Italy's Moltiply is claiming nearly €3 billion, and Kelkoo, Foundem and Connexity are before a London tribunal, where Google has asked judges to keep the DMA decision out of the evidence [8]. ## Klarna sues in Stockholm and sells inside the cart The US cart, meanwhile, runs straight through the holidays [2]. Shopify holds both sides of the layer: its merchants fill Google's cart, and this week it [let any AI agent buy from its catalog through Shop Pay](https://theinference.org/article/shopify-hands-ai-agents-the-buy-button-and-merchants-the-bill) [2][10]. Klarna straddles it too, suing in Stockholm while its installments run inside Google Pay [4][9]. The technology is not the bottleneck; the law is. The chain from live inventory to a finished purchase works in America today, while Europeans keep a search Google itself says got worse [7]. Whoever makes agent checkout trustworthy deserves the reward. The open fight is who owns the last tap, and Europe's answer so far is a fine. ## Takeaway Universal Cart puts checkout inside Search and Gemini for US shoppers from October 15, but the rollout roadmap skips the EU, where the same self-preferencing position is already a €460 million DMA finding, fines above €10 billion and a growing damages queue. ## Sources 1. [The Next Web, "Google launches Universal Cart in the US, with checkout built into Search and the Gemini app", 16 October 2026](https://thenextweb.com/news/google-universal-cart-us-only-eu) 2. [Google (Suresh Ganapathy), "An intelligent new shopping cart", blog.google, 15 October 2026](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/universal-cart-launch/) 3. [Pulse 2.0, "Google: Universal Cart Introduced To Power Agentic Commerce Across Search, Gemini And YouTube", 21 May 2026](https://pulse2.com/google-universal-cart/) 4. [Search Engine Land via MSN, "Google expands Universal Commerce Protocol and launches new agentic shopping tools", 20 May 2026](https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/google-expands-universal-commerce-protocol-and-launches-new-agentic-shopping-tools/ar-AA23F5BI) 5. [The Next Web, "EU says it is in talks with Google over changes after €890M DMA fine", 15 October 2026](https://thenextweb.com/news/eu-google-dma-fine-talks) 6. [Mint (Bloomberg), "Google hit with $1 billion EU fine over search, play store breaches — here's why", 23 July 2026](https://www.livemint.com/companies/google-hit-with-1-billion-eu-fine-over-search-play-store-breaches-heres-why-11784810224081.html) 7. [Ars Technica, "Google complies with EU rules for travel searches, says the new results stink", 8 September 2026](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/google-says-europe-is-making-it-roll-out-degraded-travel-search-results/) 8. [The Next Web, "Google's rivals line up for damages after landmark EU fine", 28 July 2026](https://thenextweb.com/news/google-rivals-damages-dma-fine) 9. [Euronews via MSN, "Google ordered to pay Klarna's PriceRunner €1.7 billion over search abuse", 1 July 2026](https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/general/google-ordered-to-pay-klarna-s-pricerunner-1-7-billion-over-search-abuse/ar-AA26ZhNv) 10. [The Verge, "Shopify opens its catalog up to more AI agents", 13 October 2026](https://www.theverge.com/news/1010365/shopify-opens-its-catalog-up-to-more-ai-agents) --- Google starts taking payments inside Search in the US; Europe, where its fines top €10 billion, is left out — The Inference. Canonical: https://theinference.org/article/google-starts-taking-payments-inside-search-in-the-us-europe-where-its-fines-top-10-billion-is-left-out