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Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

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Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#171

Post by scarface74 »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #169
scarface74 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying technology for AWS was developed internally and it was not customer facing at first. Will this myth ever die? https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-...

Did Amazon internally dog-food it before it went public? Maybe that's the confusion.

I can’t speak for how it worked in the past, but AWS and Amazon are run as two separate companies. AWS treats Amazon Retail just like any other customer and Amazon treats AWS like a third party vendor as far as choosing whether to adopt an AWS technology.

But if someone with deeper insight than someone who has been working at Amazon/AWS for -3 days (I start Monday), I’m glad to be proven wrong.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#172

Post by beambot »

taway912 wrote: post #134
sukilot wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investors get their money back, employees get their wages, and Amazon gets their non depreciated capital goods and work product

Employees do get their wages, but most were probably working on depressed wages in lieu of equity compensation -- which will now be zero. Further, if anyone left/laidoff, and they forcibly exercised options due to windows, they are underwater.

IIRC, Zoox was out fundraising. From the employee perspective, a guaranteed gig at Amazon is better than being laid off. Equity value was probably a sunk cost at this point.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#173

Post by nogabebop23 »

buildawesome wrote: post #138
TuringNYC wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sale was a distressed sale. Their earlier valuation was over thrice the acquisition price, so a $1B exit was not the intended outcome, and probably leaves many investors/employees underwater depending on liquidity preferences.

Ahh yes, the ol' buy high, sell low strategy!

Well years ago the joke was Amazon sold at a very small loss but made it up in volume, and we can see how that turned out... Maybe they're going to blow up this business model as well!

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#174

Post by csours »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #170
csours wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a consumer, you probably don't want level 3. If you're a company selling self driving cars, you probably don't want level 3. If you're a research organization developing self driving cars, you will find yourself stuck at level 3, because level 4 is really really hard. Going from level 3 to level 4 means getting rid of any problem that would keep you at level 3. Disclaimer: I work for GM, not on SDC, this is…

As someone who owns a Tesla, I think a lot of people want level 3 even if they don't realize it. Obviously if level 4 was available, people would go for it, but perfect is the enemy of good, and even with Tesla's L2 technology, it makes driving significantly easier. Continuously being ready to take over control vs controlling is a huge leap already.

I think a lot of people would use and enjoy level 3, but some people would have a real bad time.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#175

Post by bkanber »

strgcmc wrote: post #162
7952 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there an edict that amazon internal services have to be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. So even internal technology is designed with being customer facing in mind.

There is no mandate that I'm aware of (not that I know everything about everything), but it's definitely the case that projects with "externalization potential" (making up a phrase out of thin air) will generally be more likely to get funded and prioritized (of course, why wouldn't they be preferred?). So, even without a mandate, the market forces at play in terms of proposing roadmap projects and choosing what to in…

Here is Bezos' mandate from 2002. Quite prescient: https://jesusgilhernandez.com/2012/10/18/jeff-bezos-mandate-...

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#176

Post by Retric »

nogabebop23 wrote: post #173
buildawesome wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh yes, the ol' buy high, sell low strategy!

Well years ago the joke was Amazon sold at a very small loss but made it up in volume, and we can see how that turned out... Maybe they're going to blow up this business model as well!

Amazon’s “losses” have mostly been a tax dodge. They would for example invest in software R&D without presenting it as an investment from profits but rather an operating expense.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#177

Post by dahfizz »

7952 wrote: post #95
redredrobot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon doesn’t invest in greenfield projects that are not customer facing I don't think this is very true, they are just very good at turning around and selling the internal tech. The underlying technology for AWS was developed internally and it was not customer facing at first. Similarly if you look at their internal data platforms, they have invested heavily even though it's not customer facing (yet, because even…

Wasn't there an edict that amazon internal services have to be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. So even internal technology is designed with being customer facing in mind.

I think this is what you are referring to[1]. I don't think the goal is making everything externizable, I think the goal is just to have good api's everywhere. Easy productization is a side effect.

[1] https://medium.com/slingr/what-year-did-bezos-issue-the-api-...

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#178

Post by randcraw »

DavidFerris wrote: post #164
csours wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, this is solely my opinion and it is my opinion alone. I think the tech press doesn't believe that Tesla is building a self-driving product. I don't know if camera based computer vision by itself will ever be enough for full self driving. I think we can demonstrate that it is not enough at this time, and we can also demonstrate that human vision also fails at times; human vision has…

"I don't know if camera based computer vision by itself will ever be enough for full self driving." Rebuttal: If you had a 3D camera sitting in the driver's seat of a car and hooked up the control to a remote controller, I believe that car could be drive-able. A sufficiently advanced perception/control system could theoretically use the same 3D camera feed and replace the driver. Not saying it's easy, just that all t…

A camera-based self-driving autopilot is also capable of driving without hesitation straight into an overturned truck on a sunny day less than a month ago:

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/06/01/video-tesla-model-3-cras...

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#179

Post by randcraw »

goshx wrote: post #150
csours wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, this is solely my opinion and it is my opinion alone. I think the tech press doesn't believe that Tesla is building a self-driving product. I don't know if camera based computer vision by itself will ever be enough for full self driving. I think we can demonstrate that it is not enough at this time, and we can also demonstrate that human vision also fails at times; human vision has…

To me, it seems someone from Zoox wrote the article. There are many tech and non-tech press which didn't believe in anything posted on the "master plans" published by Tesla, and they are still in denial. Meanwhile, Tesla has been making huge leaps of progress and collecting billions of miles worth of data to improve their systems. What is available right now, and has been so for a couple of years, is unmatched by any…

Tesla has millions of miles of experience with a level 2+ self driving system. Waymo has comparable experience with a level 4 system. Thus it makes no sense to claim that Tesla is closer to shipping a level 5 self-driving car than Google.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#180

Post by sjg007 »

wildfire wrote: post #167
jkingsbery wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works for Amazon, I can tell you there is plenty of impressive technology built within Amazon that is only used internally to Amazon.

I doubt it, otherwise you would name it.

I imagine all the robots and logistics stuff.
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