In many ways it's actually worse.

I don't remember the item now, but something I'd bought semi regularly from Walmart. It was boosted in my search/you may like results, which makes sense. Except the product was 10x the price, and not sold by Walmart. There's no clear indication of that until you actually click into it, though. So you can add it to your cart and buy it easily without knowing any of that, by design I guess.

It seems 3rd party sellers know how it works, and probably make a ton of money sniping out of stock items. I almost fell for it as I rarely scrutinize prices, I can't imagine how many people go through with it not knowing any better.

They did the exact opposite and immediately copied the marketplace schema.

It's not surprising at all. Keep in mind that Walmart is a multi-billion dollar business, so its certain they did an analysis on this.

Convenience > Quality as dictated by the Median Consumer.

As long as they don't commingle inventory it's relatively easy to avoid (not sure if that's the case or not, but seems like most of the 3rd party sellers do their own shipping)

FWIW my main annoyance with Walmarts website is that it's not clear if you package is coming via shipping service like FedEx, who has access to my apartment complex, or just some dude in his car who needs to call me while I'm at work to be buzzed in

Target does allow third-party sellers on Target.com (and the app), but they allow in-store returns on anything — even third-party items. When I worked as a receiver, there were random items to process out that would normally/likely be salvage, but went to the returns processing center because they were from online orders. There also seems to be curation.