TL;DR
Amazon's most profitable business isn't selling goods or cloud service but search result 'ads'; it even cheats on this bribery system, squeezing sellers even harder.
Amazon's balance sheet gives away its game: selling stuff and cloud computing aren't the real money-makers. The most profitable line is 'search ranking' — whoever pays the most shows up on top. It's like the 1950s record-label scandal where labels bribed radio DJs to play their songs, except Amazon auctions off its search results.
This bribery racket takes a staggering cut, averaging 51–60% of the price of goods sold. Sellers raise prices to cover it, and Amazon forces them to offer the lowest price anywhere, so the whole country ends up paying for Amazon's bribes.
Even the auction is rigged
Amazon squeezes sellers a second time. It claims to run a 'sealed-bid, second-price auction' for ad slots, where the winner pays the second-highest bid plus a penny. But the FTC and 22 states just sued: for the past seven years, 80% of the time, Amazon secretly charged winners their maximum bid, raking in tens of billions extra.
Amazon's defense is almost philosophical: it says whenever the closing price fell below 'the true market value' of the ad, it was entitled to charge more. But auctions exist precisely to discover true market value. To claim the auction got it wrong is to admit the whole thing is a sham.
The author calls it 'enshittification inception' — a racket on top of a racket. As for the lawsuit's chances, he wryly notes Amazon could always hire a podcasting troll to tweet at the president and get the case dropped, the way Ticketmaster did.
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