Recently it was estimated that Amazon makes $30-80 billion(!) per year off not showing you the economically best results by deliberately disallowing sorting on $ per unit [1] to force sellers into ads. Amongst other tactics (ex. filter by country of origin).
AI agents can sort on $ / unit to easily find you the best deal, rendering Amazon's various forms of paid placement irrelevant.
Extend this to filtering Chinese slop brands (also not able to be filtered) and the significant portion of revenue starts looking like knocking back margins to the 3-5% range. Basically an existential threat.
Amazon cannot allow AI agents and maintain current margins.
Recently it was estimated that Amazon makes $30-80 billion(!) per year off not showing you the economically best results by deliberately disallowing sorting on $ per unit [1] to force sellers into ads. Amongst other tactics (ex. filter by country of origin).
AI agents can sort on $ / unit to easily find you the best deal, rendering Amazon's various forms of paid placement irrelevant.
Extend this to filtering Chinese slop brands (also not able to be filtered) and the significant portion of revenue starts looking like knocking back margins to the 3-5% range. Basically an existential threat.
Amazon cannot allow AI agents and maintain current margins.
[1] - https://pluralistic.net/2026/09/04/cheating-at-fraud/