alt Hacker Newslots of people here defending amazon blindly seem to be unaware of the full picture of how amazon ads works in the context of the marketplace.
the point is that, if airfryer B is rival of A, and B buys ads (to let amazon show B ahead of A even if they searched for A), and A doesn't buy ads, then if B resorts to marketing to lower the quality just enough to compete, then all the quality focus of A will not end up increasing their sales.
more importantly, to have a good view on which products are good which one are the best is not available inside of amazon that easily. reusing sku, tricking people into buying inferior ones does not impact amazon in any way since return costs are paid by the fba vendor, or seller.
I'm sure that's very annoying for A Inc. It's probably more annoying than the slotting fee they paid Target, or the wholesale discount Walmart demanded, because "we only have room on the shelf for 3 brands" feels like more of a real constraint than "only 3 brands can be the top 3 search results".
Is it worse for me as a consumer? I'm not convinced.