Organized Money The New Frontier in Price Discrimination
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Jan 23, 2026 
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative and pricing expert focused on surveillance pricing, warns about AI shopping that mines Gmail, photos, and payments. She explains how conversational AI could turbocharge personalized price steering, why retailers hand pricing power to big tech, and why early regulation and public pushback matter.
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Google Embeds Gemini As A Shopping Backbone
- Google plans to embed Gemini across search, email, photos, maps and retail platforms to power shopping agents.
- That integration creates a unified data engine able to recommend and influence purchases across many contexts.
Chatbots Replace Guesswork With Direct Signals
- Conversational AI lets firms stop inferring intent and start asking consumers directly what they want.
- That direct input makes AI the “holy grail” for surveillance pricing by revealing deep, personal preferences.
Agent Results Could Become Paid Placements
- Google can monetize agentic shopping by selling placement or featured results like search ads.
- That turns conversational responses into a potential pay-to-play channel, eroding model neutrality.
