If I understand correctly, this appears to be a continuation of the growing disparity between the little guy and Big Corp. The article talks a lot about publishers relying on affiliate links, but there are also many bloggers, YouTube channels, podcasters, etc., who have been making use of affiliate links. Will Google be "bypassing"(for lack of a better word) those peoples' affiliate marketing as well by placing their own links for those same products at the forefront?
The small sites have already lost most of their traffic for products to the large publishers which Google favors.
Question is how this will work with the courts. There's already a law suit in Germany brought by a large price comparison site against Google, suing for 500m because Google pushes their own "Google Shopping" results in SERPs, claiming they are abusing their monopoly.
