Big Google moves, Walmart’s got bots & TikTok’s in a taxi 🚕

There are some movie scenes that have always stuck with me.

The band plays as the Titanic sinks.
Kirsten Dunst’s lavish wedding in Melancholia while a planet hurtles towards Earth.
Marie Antoinette happily sipping champagne while the city burns.
And Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine, asleep as his memories are erased.

There’s a clear theme here. And it’s not just my Kirsten Dunst obsession. It’s that eerie calm. That moment where the world is shifting, but the characters just carry on, caught in their own rituals, distractions, bubbles.

Honestly, that’s exactly how I felt walking through Online Retailer this year.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a brilliant event. I had the honour of hosting a stage, had coffee with the ATC Community and reconnected with some of the best people in our industry. But if you asked me, “Was it different this year?”, I’d say... not really. Not different enough.

And that’s strange, right? Because the last 12 months have been anything but normal.
Search is changing before our eyes. Tech vendors are trimming teams. International competitors are swarming. Tariffs are scrambling. AI tools are disrupting. I’m not being alarmist (I actually think it’s great), but I can’t remember twelve months where so much has changed so fast.

We’re watching the eCom landscape get shaken up but the conference floor? Mostly the same booths, same panels and similar conversations.

There was AI curiosity, sure. But not urgency. No real sense of scrambling. No huge ideas. And honestly, it surprised me.

It’s fair to say that the future isn’t clear yet; it’s changing weekly. But if we don’t start pulling apart the playbooks we’ve come to know, we’re going to get left behind. It’s not the time to cling to what's familiar. It's the time to get uncomfortably curious, test the weird stuff, ask the harder questions.

Next year, I’ve got no doubt that the retail world will look very different. Don’t be eating cake while it happens.

Cheers
Bushy

TOP ECOMMERCE STORIES THIS WEEK

🔎 1. Google’s Big Week: New UI, Reviews Everywhere & Amazon Goes MIA
At the risk of turning this newsletter into a Google changelog, here’s your weekly dose of chaos. First up, there’s a shiny new UI in Labs testing called Google Web Guide. Think AI-written answers that read like short articles, with links woven in. Could be a hint at where search results are heading.

But the big one for retailers? In the US, Google’s now showing AI-generated summaries of your reviews including pros and cons, directly in the Chrome URL bar. Not buried in your PDP, not reliant on schema, just out there. There’s no hiding.

Oh, and Amazon just pulled out of paid Google Shopping ads. They account for up to 30% of search traffic in some categories. No word yet if it’s a short-term Prime strategy or a long-term breakup, but if it sticks, CPCs could get real interesting.

👔 2. Walmart Just Put Bots on the Org Chart
Walmart’s CTO introduced their four super agents this week: Sparky (your shopping helper), a store associate agent, partner agent Marty, and a developer agent. Each agent has a team of subagents below them. They’re already live and answering over 3 million team questions from 900,000 team members.

Walmart’s not mucking around. They want 50% of sales from eCom in five years, and AI’s their path. What was interesting that they introduced these bots like new exec hires. Roles, names, responsibilities. Welcome to the era of org charts with agents.

🦆 3. DuckDuckGo Declares War on AI Art
Look, I’m all in on AI but there’s definitely a growing anti-AI opportunity too. DuckDuckGo just leaned into it hard with a new image search filter that blocks AI-generated images (as best they can). It’s spot-on for their privacy-first, human-powered brand. I loved this line… “You should decide for yourself how much AI you want in your life – or if you want any at all.” (suspicious em dash there though)

💞 4. Want more loyal customers? Let them keep the returns
A new Notre Dame study found that customers who were allowed to keep their unwanted returns ended up more loyal. This was shown in behaviour like leaving more positive reviews than those who had to send them back. Why? The power of reciprocity. They felt the retailer was a friend, not just a business. With returns clogging up teams this peak season, it might be worth asking: do you want fewer parcels back... or just more friends?

🚖 5. TikTok goes Out Of Phone
It’s the ad term you didn’t know you needed - Out Of Phone. TikTok’s rolling out its Out Of Phone creator content across taxis, Westfields, hydration stations and more in the US, turning your For You Page into IRL billboards. It’s all about helping brands stretch their creative investment beyond the scroll and into the real world. No doubt it would be more popular than a Sydney Sweeney billboard right now.

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