> Can you ever imagine Apple pulling a stunt like this? No

Why would you jump to that conclusion? Apple is just a company... and through the right view-port, even something like this can appear to be "consumer oriented" to management ("we're helping customers locate products and services easier").

Recently Canonical thought it was a great idea to bake-in Amazon ads into their search lens... so ads and product placement tagged with their affiliate link were baked into your OS.

No company is immune to doing stupid things, even Apple.