Presumably, Apple paid Amazon to reduce the number of ads.
What's so wrong about that?
All companies allow large enterprise customers (who drive high revenue), to have custom / tailored offerings based on their requests.
Samsung has an Amazon store, and other companies bid for ad spots shown right on the official store page which link to illegal knockoffs of Samsung products. Samsung complains, and Amazon says "sorry we can't help it, that's just how things work".
Then Apple comes along, and Amazon magically cleans up their store page (demonstrating that they have the ability to do so), but leaves the rest of them as-is.
So now the take away is – if you don't sign an exclusive agreement with Amazon they will give counterfeiters full access to your products and customers, and that can be easily challenged in court (which is exactly what the FTC is doing right now).
I agree though bidding on a trademark where you can advertise as a competitor when someone explicitly searches for a brand should be considered copyright infringement.
It’s definitely a horrible user experience - Apple, Google, and Amazon all do it
Just searched for "Netflix". First result is some app called "Chewy" (with [ad]) next to it. Search for "GitHub". First result is some app called "ServerCat". Search for "Grand Theft Auto". First result is some app call "One State RP". Search for "23andMe". First result is for "BodyFast: ..."
And probably less than 15% of overall retail marketshare?
Conversely what's Amazon's share of physical detail? (Preferably excluding whole foods since that's an arguably different business to selling cheap electronics and other junk)
It's as if the two companies operate in... different spheres!
Repeating the previous opinion with slightly different wording seems a bit odd.
Even though the topics are frequently discussed together, anticompetitive behavior is something different than being a monopoly and one does not require the other.
In the case of Amazon, it's even worse, because despite a 'mere' 36% market share, there is a lot of evidence that they have market-moving pricing power.
They generally exercise it by restricting the prices sellers can charge in other stores. This happens to almost all sellers on Amazon.
The law suit is not about the ads, per se. It's about price-fixing, which you can probably agree should not be allowed.