No Hacks: Optimising the Web for AI Agents
Your next million website visitors won't be human.
And most websites are completely unprepared. Navigation that makes sense to humans confuses agents. Checkouts break. Critical information is invisible.
No Hacks is the podcast about this shift. We explore how to optimise websites for AI agents: what breaks, what works, and what companies need to do now to stay visible in an agent-driven web.
Hosted by Slobodan Manic (slobodanmanic.com), consultant and speaker on Agent Experience Optimisation (AXO).
New episodes weekly. Subscribe to the companion newsletter at nohacks.substack.com.
No Hacks: Optimising the Web for AI Agents
214: How Google Just Took Control of AI Commerce (UCP + Apple Deal Explained)
Google just made two massive moves in 48 hours, and together, they could reshape how AI interacts with commerce forever.
First: the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard that lets AI agents shop on your behalf. Discovery, checkout, payments, post-purchase, the whole journey, with one common language. Backed by Shopify, Walmart, Target, Visa, Mastercard, and 20+ others.
Second: a multi-year deal with Apple. Gemini will power the next generation of Apple Intelligence, including Siri. That's Google's AI running on 2 billion Apple devices.
In this episode, I break down what UCP actually is, how it works, why the Apple deal matters, and what this means for merchants, developers, and anyone building for the agentic web.
CHAPTERS
- 00:00 – The Anthony Joshua smile meme (and what it has to do with Google)
- 02:59 – The landscape: AI agents, fragmentation, and the assistant wars
- 06:36 – What is UCP? Universal Commerce Protocol explained
- 11:04 – Who's backing UCP and what it enables today
- 14:21 – The Apple-Gemini deal: what it means
- 17:55 – Why Apple chose Google (and what happens to OpenAI)
- 21:00 – Connecting the dots: Google's full strategy
- 24:00 – What this means for merchants and developers
- 26:30 – The bigger picture: who controls the agentic web?
- 29:07 – Closing thoughts
LINKS
- UCP Documentation: https://ucp.dev
- UCP GitHub: https://github.com/Universal-Commerce-Protocol/ucp
- Google's UCP Announcement: https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/agentic-commerce-ai-tools-protocol-retailers-platforms/
- Google-Apple Joint Statement: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/company-announcements/joint-statement-google-apple/
- Shopify's UCP Deep-Dive: https://shopify.engineering/UCP
KEYWORDS/TAGS
Google, UCP, Universal Commerce Protocol, AI agents, agentic commerce, e-commerce, Apple Intelligence, Gemini, Siri, AI shopping, MCP, Shopify, OpenAI, retail technology
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