The Google Merchant API migration has a silent mispricing trap (Content API shuts down Aug 18, 2026)

Short summary

Google is shutting down the Content API for Shopping on August 18, 2026; the Merchant API migration introduces silent data corruption traps in price formatting (string to micros), product ID delimiters (colon to tilde), and field naming (id to name). These changes accept invalid data without errors, causing misspricing and ID collisions in live catalogs. Includes focused audit checklist with grep patterns to catch migration traps before deployment.

• •Content API for Shopping shuts down August 18, 2026; no grace period or soft cutoff
• •Merchant API is architectural rebuild, not rename—silent bugs in price format, ID parsing, and field names
• •Provides grep-based audit checklist to verify migration correctness before goes live

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