Automation

The Agentic Web and What It Means for Your Business

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Remember when having a website was optional? Plenty of business owners I talked to in the early days thought the web was a fad. Then their customers started searching online, and the businesses without a site got left behind.

I think we are at a similar point again. This time it’s called the agentic web.

So what is it? Today the web is built for people. You open a browser, click around, fill in forms and hit submit. On the agentic web, a lot of that clicking is done by software agents working on your behalf. You tell an agent what you want, like “book me a flight to Toronto on Thursday for under $400,” and it visits the sites, compares the options and completes the booking.

Think of it as hiring an assistant who never sleeps and has a login to every site you use. That is the big upside. As you’ll see below, it’s also the big risk.

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UCP in 2026: What Has Changed Since Launch

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Google introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) at the National Retail Federation show on January 11, 2026. It was built with Shopify, with Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart as founding partners and more than 20 other backers at launch, including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, American Express, Best Buy and The Home Depot.

Our earlier article covered the basics: what UCP is for, how a purchase works, and how to get ready. Almost nine months later, a lot has changed. The protocol has shipped four spec releases, added new features, set up a formal governance structure that includes some of Google’s biggest rivals, and started moving into grocery, food delivery and travel. This post brings the picture up to date.

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MCP vs. RAG: Two Ways AI Gets Smarter

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Your AI chatbot is only as smart as what it knows and how it’s allowed to act on that knowledge. That distinction is at the heart of two of the most important technologies shaping enterprise AI right now: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) and the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

If you’re investing in AI tools, piloting copilots, or signing off on AI roadmaps, understanding the difference isn’t a technical detail, it is a critical one.

Large language models (LLMs) like the ones powering ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot have a fundamental limitation: their knowledge is frozen at the time they were trained. Ask about last quarter’s sales figures, your internal HR policy, or a new regulation published last month, and without additional help, the model either guesses or says it doesn’t know.

RAG and MCP are two different answers to that problem. One improves what the AI knows. The other improves what the AI can do.

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Agentic Commerce: The Future of Business Transactions

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Agentic Commerce header image

The digital economy is on the brink of its most significant transformation since the advent of e-commerce. Autonomous AI agents are beginning to conduct business transactions on behalf of companies and individuals, ushering in what many are calling the era of “agentic commerce.”

This isn’t science fiction, it’s happening now, and it’s reshaping how business gets done.

Just as cloud computing revolutionized data storage and the Internet transformed communication, agentic commerce is poised to fundamentally alter the mechanics of buying, selling, and negotiating in the global marketplace. The implications are profound, touching everything from procurement and supply chain management to customer service and strategic planning.

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