Google prioritizes certain websites/results when I enter queries too, it doesn't mean I'm required to click on them.
What ever happened to people spending a few extra minutes looking for the result they want? If the first few aren't correct for you then move on. Unless you're spending an extra 30+ minutes because the search doesn't work correctly at all then there's no issue here.
I would like to call this "an appeal to free will". It's true that individuals can choose what they click, but there is also going to be a statistical reality of what people "choose" to click more/most often.
Because of this, imo the big deal is absolutely gargantuan. Google for example handles several billions of searches per day. To your point of continuing to hunt for the right results, just adding a few seconds per search increases the amount of aggregate time spent searching on a scale of centuries per day. I would argue it's a similar case with Amazon; the service is so large that a minute changes can have tremendous impacts.