Amazon is integrating Alexa for Shopping directly into the main search bar on Amazon.com and its app, replacing the separate Rufus chatbot branding. The unified assistant offers conversational answers, price history, product comparisons, automated reordering, and cart building. The move is framed as 'agentic' and is strategically motivated by competition from OpenAI's Instant Checkout, Google's Buy for Me, and Perplexity's Comet browser, all of which route purchases outside Amazon. Amazon's $56 billion ad business depends on owning the top-of-funnel search moment, and third-party AI agents threaten that by completing comparisons and purchases on users' behalf. Amazon is also suing Perplexity over its Comet agent accessing Amazon.com in violation of terms of service. The rollout is currently US-only and free for signed-in users without requiring Prime or an Echo device.
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