I believe amazone should pay for their own advertisement to well themsell and prices should be transparent (amazone has to pay them self what other would have to pay), _because then they would still need to pay tax_ for this. At least in countries where taxes are not very low this could make the situation slightly better. Through not that much better tbh.
Yes this sounds like an antitrust situation to me (I know they are not technically a monopoly but different countries have different takes on these laws so it's worth considering why they exist).
A phone wholesaler with a retail business will be broken up since it is a problem for their other retail customers.
This is quite similar where Amazon is acting as both the provider and a retail customer competing against their other retail (marketplace business) customers, with a number of advantages.
Having them forced to provide services at arm's length, at published costs, with audited public books and no inside information would level the playing field. They probably already account for advertising "spend" internally anyway if they're smart, since as another poster alluded they miss out on PPC when someone clicks on an Amazon product so need to know what it cost them.
That is how it works in the physical goods world, at least. A corporate owned store "buys" it's inventory from the corporation. I'm not sure exactly how taxes intersect with those transactions, but they establish a much clearer picture of how money moves within the organization. Opportunity costs become a lot clearer when it's not "we could have made X amount from ads here" but instead "we spent X on advertising."
