My original point was that it's not just about brand perception, but that was largely on based on my incorrect belief that AWS is a much larger portion of Amazon's revenue than it is in reality. I thought it was like 40-50%, but it's actually only 14.5%. Interestingly, I found this quote from the source[0]:

> AWS’ revenue makes up 14.5% of Amazon’s total revenue of $110.8 billion. And for the first time ever, revenue from AWS, advertising, third-party seller services and Prime subscriptions ($55.9 million) surpassed revenue from Amazon’s retail and product sales ($54.9 billion).

This certainly reinforces your point! It sure sounds like Amazon retail is a sort of loss leader.

[0]: https://www.fiercetelecom.com/platforms/aws-to-rescue-3q-rev...

>This certainly reinforces your point! It sure sounds like Amazon retail is a sort of loss leader.

"Your margin is my opportunity" --Jeff Bezos

Jeff's ethos seems to be undercut everybody at any chance. That seems to include people using his platform in the form of plainly labeled Amazon branded products or Amazon owned brands of other names. Open a platform to sell things. Open that platform to allow 3rd parties to sell things while taking a cut. Aggregate all of that sales data to find what items are worthy of selling those items directly screwing the 3rd parties.