Amazon Just Changed Shopping (Without Telling Sellers)

Amazon has quietly begun testing something that sounds small but is structurally enormous. The feature is called “Buy for Me,” and it sits inside a broader experiment Amazon calls “Shop Direct.” The simplest way to understand it is this: Amazon is trying to let customers shop the entire internet without ever leaving Amazon.

Here’s how it works. A customer searches for a product on Amazon. If Amazon doesn’t sell that product, Amazon may still show it anyway. The product listing looks like a normal Amazon listing, except instead of “Add to Cart,” there is a button that says “Buy for Me.” When the customer clicks it, Amazon’s AI agent goes to the brand’s own website, adds the item to the cart, checks out on the customer’s behalf, and places the order. The customer stays on Amazon the entire time. The brand fulfills the order from its own site, often without ever realizing Amazon initiated it.

In other words, Amazon is acting as a shopping agent (discovering the product, initiating the transaction, and owning the customer interface) while the seller’s website becomes the backend fulfillment system.

This is where the backlash begins. Many brands did not opt into this program. Some explicitly chose not to sell on Amazon. Yet they found Amazon displaying their products anyway, pulling data from public product pages and routing orders through Amazon’s AI. In several cases, the AI placed orders for products that were out of stock or not sold at all, creating operational chaos. Sellers were angry because they had been enrolled into Amazon’s ecosystem without consent.

Amazon’s defense is straightforward. The information is public. The system checks price and availability. There’s no commission. Sellers can opt out by emailing Amazon. Technically, this all sounds reasonable. Strategically, it misses the point entirely. Because what Amazon is actually doing here is not “helping shoppers.” It is claiming ownership over the shopping experience itself.

This is the crucial shift sellers should focus on. If customers learn that Amazon can find anything and handle checkout everywhere, there is no reason to browse brand sites, compare stores, or even use Google. Amazon becomes the shopping operating system, and sellers become interchangeable fulfillment endpoints.

For Amazon sellers specifically, this should feel unsettling. Because “Buy for Me” suggests a future where Seller Central is no longer the gatekeeper. If Amazon can discover products, pull pricing, initiate purchases, and own the customer relationship without formal seller participation, then the traditional marketplace model becomes optional.

If you are an Amazon seller, Amazon is telling you, very clearly, what kind of company it wants to be next. Not a marketplace. Not a retailer. But the default interface between consumers and the entire supply side of the internet. And once a platform owns that interface, everyone else is negotiating from downstream.

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