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Inside Amazon Go
101–110 of 291 posts
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#102I love this - shows why Amazon keeps growing. Seems like the total investment in this store/technology is probably in the single digit digit millions (or maybe low double digit). If it doesn't work? Lose, ~$10 million. But if it works there's likely huge upside. It's just a smart bet for a big company. Sometimes your bets turn into AWS, and sometimes they turn into the Fire phone. Most companies I've worked at are ve…
>Seems like the total investment in this store/technology is probably in the single digit digit millions (or maybe low double digit). It was much more than that. They bought Whole Foods which was worth 13 billion.
Amazon Go had very little to do with Whole Foods.
It may, one day, but to link the cost of buying Whole Foods to the cost of development of Go is inaccurate.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The marketplace today is hardly the place for meaningful interaction, whether with employees or other shoppers. What it seems like to me is unpaid emotional labor. To have interesting social time, we need less hours at work and more public (non-commercial) spaces to meet. For example, where are children supposed to meet?
Social time with the freedom to choose how you spend it allows individuals to congregate into their own tribes and pursue interests pertinent to them. Forced social interactions that are the byproduct of other necessary transactions are how we learn from others unlike ourselves.
Your comment is spot on.
Being in line at the DMV is probably the best example I can think of this.
I'm usually waiting for a while, and chatting with whomever is next to me. Not unusual to be an interesting conversation with someone I'd have never otherwise spoken to (and probably vice versa).
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#104Attacks I'd like to try but would get picked up by the cops if I did: - Carry empty bags/containers of cheaper items in the store and place products inside these before pulling them off of the shelf. - Pull products off of the shelf and give them to a friend. Place identical empty bags/containers back to re-credit your account while your friend never has the item debited and walks out. - Drape a blanket over yourself…
I'm sure there are lots of clever ways to trick the system, but do you really want to try that when you're under constant and ubiquitous surveillance and you had to reveal your name, address, and credit card number to enter the store?
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
It definitely will. Self-checkout is widely available in Europe. The laws about data and privacy will be different but this is a customer experience / labor cost play, not a ploy to get data.
Self checkout is a way different from thousands of video cameras that track all your moves, selection habits, etc.
There's a pretty good chance that stores in Europe have video cameras already there tracking where customers move, what they look at, what expressions are on their face when they read signs, etc...
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#106Am I the only one living in a country where most stores have self-checkout already? The comments here make it sound like it's either Amazon Go or having to pay through a cashier. Jobs and social interaction have already been elminated by self-checkout. The revolution with Amazon Go is that you don't need to scan anything yourself, not that it removes the cashier.
Plus Amazon Go eliminates the payment process. When you think how much time you lost by scanning every item and paying via cash or credit card. Amazon Go is much more easier and quicker.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Self checkout is a way different from thousands of video cameras that track all your moves, selection habits, etc.
There's a pretty good chance that stores in Europe have video cameras already there tracking where customers move, what they look at, what expressions are on their face when they read signs, etc...
I highly doubt so. The data privacy laws are pretty strict here.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon has had this store open for employees to use for some time. Think of that time as a massive bug bash hacking project where really smart people are encouraged to try to find ways to wreak havoc with the system. There are undoubtedly attacks still to find but Amazon is definitely not being clueless about this.
>There are undoubtedly attacks still to find but Amazon is definitely not being clueless about this. They likely have people watching the cameras full-time and will just report you to the cops if they see sleight-of-hand, now with identification and an address since you have to show your Amazon account when walking in. This is probably forever tenable to the bottom line since they're eliminating cashiers and security…
> will just report you to the cops if they see sleight-of-hand
Why? Just add it to the order.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you patting Amazon so hard on the back over this hypothesis? The article didn't mention anything about it; Walmart, Target, 7-11 all have the exact same power, but don't exercise it. Why do you think Amazon Go will push healthy snacks over deep-fried candybars?
Whole foods. Amazon is going upmarket, not down.
There's no evidence that Amazon bought Whole Foods because it's an upmarket grocery store and avoided others. It's very likely that Amazon will eventually buy a "normal" grocery chain and serve as large of a population as possible.
Re: Inside Amazon Go
#110I know the standard reaction from a lot of HN folk will be to celebrate this progress: it's faster, more efficient, and no one likes to waste time waiting in line. Still, though, I think Amazon's automation of the retail experience is helping to create a society where there is even less real social interaction, and I think it's a factor (if even a small one currently) in the increasing tribalism in American society.…
> Throughout history, "the marketplace" had been one of the major centers of interpersonal interaction If you shop at Whole Foods, Target, Trader Joe's, Kroger, etc. this has never been true for you, unless by social interaction you mean handing your card to the cashier or asking someone a question. Even in my local, family owned grocery store I don't see this "marketplace" attitude. I doubt it exists anywhere outsid…
While it might not have been a particularly "deep" interaction, I definitely got to know my favorite checkout person at Whole Foods, knowing what he used to do, keeping each other up to date on new things we were doing, and even following his move from being a checker at Whole Foods to being a manager at another nearby store.
I miss the person who used to work at the Staples who always lit up my day when I needed to buy paper.