I want the best product for the price, but i wouldn't trust amazon to make that choice for me.

"Amazon's choice" is always going to be about what's best for amazon. that can either be some opaque criteria that the sellers can try to game, or amazon can just be honest about it and sell that spot instead of giving it to whatever seller cheats the best. I trust that the "amazon's choice" listing for any search is good enough, and not defective or fraudulent. beyond that i'm either going to do my own research if it's something i really care about, or i'm going to buy amazon's choice if i decide that i don't really care and i value not having to think about it.

It's literally right there in the name - Amazon's Choice.

"Someone else" (Amazon) was always getting an extra cut. That's exactly the value proposition of a retailer. I mean, there's some complexity here that you don't see with physical retail due to the affiliate relationship, but the principle doesn't change. The whole point to going to a store for an item is that you know they'll stock it in an easily accessible form and quantity that you would have a hard time sourcing from an original manufacturer. And we've always been willing to pay for that service with a markup.

> The whole point to going to a store for an item is that you know they'll stock it in an easily accessible form and quantity that you would have a hard time sourcing from an original manufacturer. And we've always been willing to pay for that service with a markup.

That's the expected cut. It's not extra at all.

The extra cut here is giving someone else a kickback and you get exactly zero value for those extra dollars.