Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Home Services

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 247 posts

Re: Amazon Home Services

#31

Post by dagw »

techsupporter wrote: post #28
gchokov wrote: post #20

Really hate when web sites assume you live in the US. Don't make me click around menus and finally ask for US Zip code (And don't assume Zip codes have 5-digits only).

> And don't assume Zip codes have 5-digits only Aren't ZIP (it's an initialism, Zone Improvement Plan) codes by definition a US-only thing? Even in countries that don't call them post/postal codes, they're not known as ZIP codes.

Pedantically, yes. Practically, no.

Basically everybody in the US uses the phrase "zip-code" informally to mean postal code even when talking about international addresses.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#32

Post by aphexairlines »

MCRed wrote: post #21
icebraining wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if nobody remembers them, as MCRed says, does it really hurt their brand?

Well, they stick around for years. When I found the mail order catalogs they were 3 years old. Amazon.com runs on a lot of 20 year old code because they've never been able to upgrade it, because there's so much cruft. Amazon menusand all that create cruft. There are bugs I fixed in 2006 that came back in 2009 and are still there-- the team that I was on when I fixed them no longer exists because the people got pulled…

In what way do they hate engineers?

Re: Amazon Home Services

#33

Post by serge2k »

MCRed wrote: post #30
dkyc wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to see this framed so negative. What they do is essentially being the lean huge startup . They launch a product, gather initial feedback, and if it turns out promising (like AWS) they double-down. If it doesn't work, they kill it. I think it's actually nice to see such a rapid-iteration product development done by a company with that many resources and talent.

It is a negative because Amazon doesn't have that many resources or talent. They are short on engineers. The people building things like amazon movies are being taken off of key things like product search. Bugs I fixed there were regressed in later years and are still broken-- this is key product sales bugs that are still there. The team I was on that wrote the code got dissipated away. Here's a key thing that people…

> He [Bezos] attended Princeton University, intending to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers and graduated summa cum laude, with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in electrical engineering and computer science

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos#Early_and_personal_l...

I guess that's not engineering though.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#35

Post by serge2k »

einrealist wrote: post #13
MCRed wrote: post #2

Remember Amazon Menus? (Scanned menus of local restaurants) Remember Amazon Movie Listings? Remember the "drone delivery"? (It makes no sense on the face of it, and will never happen. But it was a big press release.) Remember Amazon scanned catalogs (eg: Mail order catalogs selling things in competition with Amazon, that you could search) Remember A9? (Amazon's answer to google, biggest mainstream mention was being u…

Isn't that equal to startup or seed investor culture? To me it is the only way to discover new markets or market strategies. It is the best thing Amazon can do and they have the money for these adventures. As a developer, this must be a dream environment to work in, even when only 1 idea in 10 works out.

Nope, not if you aren't coming up with the ideas.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#36

Post by [deleted] »

flyinglizard wrote: post #12
MCRed wrote: post #2

Remember Amazon Menus? (Scanned menus of local restaurants) Remember Amazon Movie Listings? Remember the "drone delivery"? (It makes no sense on the face of it, and will never happen. But it was a big press release.) Remember Amazon scanned catalogs (eg: Mail order catalogs selling things in competition with Amazon, that you could search) Remember A9? (Amazon's answer to google, biggest mainstream mention was being u…

Amazon drone delivery WILL happen. This will be completely disruptive to how stuff is consumed. Amazon being able to reach any point in an urban environment from its outskirts, at any time of day, within minutes and at a cost of just cents, will completely change consumption patterns (at least for existing Amazon users). Once something has such a strong financial implication, any other obstacle in its way is going to…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Home Services

#37

Post by manigandham »

thomasfoster96 wrote: post #3

Amazon can now let me hire a goat herder[0] to get my lawn eaten down. Is there anything they can't sell? [0] http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UBYDXXQ/ref=vas_sf_GoatGrazing

This is a real thing, large companies including bay area tech companies use them to graze lawns instead of just mowing. There was even a Shark Tank pitch.

Re: Amazon Home Services

#38

Post by nknighthb »

gchokov wrote: post #20

Really hate when web sites assume you live in the US. Don't make me click around menus and finally ask for US Zip code (And don't assume Zip codes have 5-digits only).

Amazon.com is their US site. If you're there, you've effectively walked into a store in Seattle. If you want a store not tailored to the US market, you'll need to visit one of the sites they've made for other countries (where this is probably not available yet).

Re: Amazon Home Services

#40

Post by ericleung »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #39

The is certainly space for a "Uber/Airbnb for home services", but I am not sure Amazon will be it. What startups are in this space, and do they have any traction?

Seems like Taskrabbit sort of fills this space at the moment, unaware of other startups in the space though
Post reply on HN