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I get what you are saying Leebase - Amazon makes more money per book on the Big 6 book Agency sales and since Kindle sales are increasing dramatically they probably are making more money overall. That doesn't mean that they are overall maximizing their revenue however if sales growth isn't what it used to be under lower pricing structures. Amazon isn't very forthcoming with their numbers but every once in awhile they leak a hint that a large chunk of their Kindle Revenue is coming from low priced books and not those $12.99 and up big releases.
I also strongly suspect Amazon has gone into publishing in order to get pricing control over a chunk of new release material. The only thing that shocks me is that they've taken this long to become serious about it. Many industry experts were predicting it would happen within months after the Agency Pricing blow-ups.
As for Gatekeeping, I think it is probably the big Publishing houses strongest value in the future marketplace - finding new authors and telling us what reading is the best use of our time. Unfortunately, the big Publishing houses in recent years have largely abandoned that role and "gatekeeping" in terms of combing through author submissions to find the gems is mostly now done by author agents. They need to get back to it.
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