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Amazon’s new pitch to merchants sounds generous:
“Bypass all fees — let customers shop your brand directly.”
Here’s the fine print.
A shopper searches for your brand → clicks your website → makes a purchase.
But the transaction still happens inside Amazon’s app.
You get the sale.
Amazon gets the customer.
If that sounds familiar, remember Shopify’s “one-page checkout”?
Merchants loved it — until they learned every buyer was being funneled into Shopify Audiences. Your checkout data became their data to monetize.
Different platform, same playbook.
Merchants win short-term revenue but lose long-term customer relationships and retargeting power.
The fight isn’t over ad spend anymore — it’s over data infrastructure.
In an AI-first world, the companies that own data pipelines own the future.
If you don’t control your infrastructure, you don’t control your customers.
No matter whose checkout they use.