> Didn't Amazon ban products from Apple and Google, that competed with their own, from their online store?
I witnessed something similar at a former company[0] I had worked for. We had mobile apps for a reading product that could, theoretically, compete with Amazon's book business. Sort of a Netflix for books. Successfully launched both on Apple and Google's marketplaces, the app worked, had traction, wasn't a sketchy business or anything.
We experienced what we took to calling a soft-rejection. The app itself was approved but we were not able to launch / have it available on any of Amazon's devices. Now, you might be willing to write it off as the vagaries of dealing with a billion dollar corporation, your typical "Google locked me out and I'm SOL" thing. However, the owners of this company had sold a previous business[1] to Amazon. They had contacts and relationships at Amazon, decently high-level too such that were it an "oops, edge case" it should have been easily dealt with. Silence. They were stonewalled.
[0] - Grain of Salt: I was not on the mobile team, but we were a small operation, ate lunch daily, very open culture from the CEO to the junior folks. We talked about this a lot. This was also 5+ years ago, and I know of few of my coworkers lurk so please correct me if my memory is corrupted.
[1] - Given our very good team atmosphere, we ended up hearing a bit of history from the founders about the Amazon acquisition. From what I understand, it was extremely cut-throat and underhanded on Amazon's part. A former coworker succinctly summed it up as "The only relationship you want with Amazon is to be their customer."