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First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

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Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#11

Post by vowelless »

ljd wrote: post #6

It seems obvious to me that Bezos took this one public so early to garner public support so that the FAA can't just sit on it forever. All of Amazon's other initiatives didn't need some federal regulator to OK it before they could start selling it. I think this is an effective solution to getting a notoriously slow agency to move on an item. No one wants to be seen as stopping innovation, not even the FAA.

> No one wants to be seen as stopping innovation, not even the FAA.

That has been my experience. I don't deal with them directly, but we have people on our team who work closely with them when it comes to unmanned aircraft.

The FAA has a comprehensive publication about UAVs: http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/uas/

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#12

Post by owenjones »

tptacek wrote: post #8

It seems disingenuous for this blog to suggest that MacKenzie Bezos's negative review of the Bezos book was part of the same orchestrated spin campaign as the drone story. That review didn't simply object to the tone or the message of the book, but also pointed out specific factual errors the book made, errors that were later tacitly acknowledged by the author.

Also even if the book '... portrays Bezos as a ruthless tyrant and a "penny-pinching ballbuster,"' would that dissuade anyone who was already planning on it from shopping at Amazon?

To me, regardless of the truth, being "penny-pinching" given Amazon's razor thin margins seems like a good trait for the CEO.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#13

Post by benjamincburns »

In all of the criticism, I haven't seen anything remarking on the energy cost for this. I can hear a strawman in the audience saying "But drones are tiny/electric/cheap!" Not at these scales. Consider the (lack of) efficiency of quadcopters, the weights and distances involved, and the total sales volume for this service in even a small test market. I'd buy that flight itself is a viable option over wheeled vehicles when you consider more direct transit, reduction in delays due to traffic, and the reduction in weight of the delivery vehicle, but I'd imagine this advantage would only exist for fixed-wing delivery vehicles, not quad/hex/octo-copters.

$20 says that if this ever happens in the real world, the delivery vehicles are mechanically very different from what's shown in the promo video.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#14

Post by uptown »

inigoesdr wrote: post #3

I'm not sure the target audience for 60 minutes is that similar to the audience that would care about drone delivery or Cyber Monday so much. Suggesting that Amazon may have intentionally wanted the story aired the day before Cyber Monday seems like a bit of a stretch. Also, the fact that Amazon wants to do drone delivery in the future has been discussed previously, and they still say it's a few years out, so this is…

"I'm not sure the target audience for 60 minutes is that similar to the audience that would care about drone delivery or Cyber Monday so much."

The 60 Minutes audience is absolutely part of the Amazon customer base - if not currently, they're in the crosshairs. Amazon explained in the segment that part of their mission is to sell everything - to everyone. And they also got their company name on the front page of every major news site. I expect they were part of most morning "news" shows, and will be mentioned in many evening news broadcasts tonight. Whether people watched 60 minutes or not - it's likely that a huge percentage of potential American shoppers saw the Amazon name mentioned someplace because of that story.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#16

Post by headShrinker »

snowwrestler wrote: post #4

This piece is right on. Amazon package drones are total vaporware at this point; the only reason to announce them is to improve the competitive positioning of Amazon in the press. This is no different than the "slate" announcement by Microsoft and HP at CES 2010, which was widely panned and never produced any actual products for sale. But for a short time, it put MS in all the news stories about the iPad.

You can call it vaporware, but someone is going to utilize this technology. Companies in the other countries already are.

The technology is so new, and has yet to get to it's pinnacle. Bezos properly address the element that is missing, "redundancy". Whether you like it or not, these things will be flying above your head within 3 years. Whether Amazon is the one to do it? You think it's going to be UPS, FedEx, or USPS? My money is on Amazon.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#18

Post by ChuckMcM »

Well that didn't take long[1] :-) Perhaps Bezos is taking his cues from Google who trots out their self driving car when ever they want to boost their image with the public. It is interesting to watch from the perspective of companies balancing the 'reality' that they are doing everything they can to maximize their influencer, revenue, Etc. And still keep a friendly face on it. There was a time that the only information the public got about a company was their advertisements.

I subscribe to the notion that this particular stunt was both, technology investigation and PR piece. It sets Amazon apart from Walmart as "new technology" which carries a bit of cachet with the buying public, and there are some very real and interesting questions that can be informed by building a prototype system (which refers back to our discussion a while ago about actually doing something to figure out how hard it is really) and since it is so far out all it does is cause worry on the part of competitors.

Seems like a reasonable strategy to me.

[1] A blog post arguing some technology demo is a PR stunt

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#19

Post by randomdata »

benjamincburns wrote: post #13

In all of the criticism, I haven't seen anything remarking on the energy cost for this. I can hear a strawman in the audience saying "But drones are tiny/electric/cheap!" Not at these scales. Consider the (lack of) efficiency of quadcopters, the weights and distances involved, and the total sales volume for this service in even a small test market. I'd buy that flight itself is a viable option over wheeled vehicles w…

I, for one, eagerly await the return of the autogryo for local mail delivery.
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