[inertiatic]

If for convenience I search for "Amazon product X" on my browser bar instead of directly on Amazon, that means that in order for Amazon to generate a certain amount of profit on that product they also have to pay my search engine now, which means all other things equal, this costs me money.

Of course in real life it's not that simple a situation but it's easy to see that everyone behaving like this ends up with the consumer essentially losing money.

[mrweasel]

>they also have to pay my search engine now, which means all other things equal, this costs me money.

Most customer focused companies could save a pretty sum of money by not advertising. Of cause it may hurt overall sales to not advertise.

[zyx321]

The price on Amazon is based on what the market will pay. If they could charge more, they would do so.

The only one losing money is Jeff Bezos.

[franga2000]

From what I understand, affiliate links pay out only when you buy something. Traditionally, this was taken from the seller's margin and the price of the product was not increased, as the higher volume of sales made up multiple times for the loss from commissions.

But since Amazon gets nothing from the "passive" affiliate links (ones that don't increase volume), DDG might be big enough to make them have to compensate. Would be interesting to see the numbers for this...