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“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

justwalkout.com

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Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#331

Post by iNate2000 »

dosethree wrote: post #250
boublepop wrote: post #246

Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…

Where’s the evidence anyone will actually use this thing? Maybe eventually. You can already do this at apple, but does anyone do it? Perhaps, they will get used to it in time, but i don’t know.

But at apple it's a much more standard checkout flow, right? Scan an item, press "buy" and done, right?

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#332

Post by hamandcheese »

dosethree wrote: post #250
boublepop wrote: post #246

Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…

Where’s the evidence anyone will actually use this thing? Maybe eventually. You can already do this at apple, but does anyone do it? Perhaps, they will get used to it in time, but i don’t know.

I do it at Apple, but afaik Apples system is based mostly on trust? You just scan and pay with your device, then walk out. Granted, I haven’t tried to steal so there could be more tech than I realize.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#333

Post by adenverd »

turc1656 wrote: post #294
heavenlyblue wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are only good because Ebay is pathetically bad.

They're only good because they were repeatedly given an infinite amount of money for 2 decades by investors while their retail operations lost money so that they could nail the implementation and the promise that they would figure out how to make it profitable.

Amazon effectively leveraged investment capital to do exactly what they said they would do - innovate, learn into the market, and improve iteratively. From investors' perspectives (and probably consumers' perspectives as well), Amazon has succeeded brilliantly.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#334

Post by reaperducer »

dosethree wrote: post #250
boublepop wrote: post #246

Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…

Where’s the evidence anyone will actually use this thing? Maybe eventually. You can already do this at apple, but does anyone do it? Perhaps, they will get used to it in time, but i don’t know.

I do. I think in my last ten purchases from an Apple Store I've only not had a zero-interactivity experience once. And that was because a Genius had get a Thunderbolt 2 to USB-C cable from the back. Even then, once she handed it to me, I still checked out on my phone with the Apple Store app.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#336

Post by hammock »

MattDamonSpace wrote: post #247
boublepop wrote: post #246

Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…

Yep. I've been sitting here thinking Amazon was going to spool up tons of retail locations that leveraged their tech to create a massive moat that other Brick & Mortars couldn't possibly compete with. In hindsight it seems obvious that the play was to "AWS" the whole thing: make yourself the first/best customer, nail the implementation, then sell it to the world.

>In hindsight it seems obvious that the play was to "AWS" the whole thing: make yourself the first/best customer, nail the implementation, then sell it to the world.

It's not just about "AWS"-ing the thing. It's about gaining access to all of the transaction data and marrying that to what Amazon already knows about you. A retailer like Walmart would NEVER use this tech, they know their data is one of the most valuable things they have (in fact they don't share their data with anyone, while all the other FDM retailers do), but boutique retailers like J Crew or whoever would happily.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#337

Post by paulmd »

reaperducer wrote: post #327
boublepop wrote: post #246

Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…

And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all who can provide something like this? One of the big tech companies in the 80's demonstrated this. I think it was either IBM or AT&T/Bellcore. Essentially, it was just a scanner at the door that read RFID tags in each item, and your credit card. This was back when RFID was still oh-holy-shit technology. The reason I think AT&T might have been involved is that the vi…

IBM was playing with this for sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-1F71Wa_zo

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#338

Post by obmelvin »

dosethree wrote: post #250
boublepop wrote: post #246

Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…

Where’s the evidence anyone will actually use this thing? Maybe eventually. You can already do this at apple, but does anyone do it? Perhaps, they will get used to it in time, but i don’t know.

> Where’s the evidence anyone will actually use this thing?

Well, who knows how much interest will truly materialize, particularly given the data leaked to amazon, but the post claims/implies that retailers reached out to Amazon and were interested in licensing the technology.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#339

Post by hk__2 »

Crazyontap wrote: post #314
mherdeg wrote: post #234

This is just an observation that doesn't contribute meaningfully to discussion, but ... Twenty years ago this web site would 100% have looked like an April Fool's joke. Don't know what to make of that. Maybe it's that although retail feels almost exactly the same as it always has, under the hood lots of parts have really been moving, and I just haven't noticed? The parallel observation is that when Gmail was announce…

Yeah with all the innovation it indeed seems like we are living in a fairy tale. 20 years ago it would be impossible to think that you can order stuff from an unknown location/seller using a piece of glass. And soon we'll have drones coming to our house with packages.

> 20 years ago it would be impossible to think that you can order stuff from an unknown location/seller using a piece of glass.

FYI 20 years ago the total yearly e-commerce trade sales accounted for $27B in the US alone [1].

[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/185283/total-and-e-comme...

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#340

Post by m4rtink »

michaeltbuss wrote: post #283
jessriedel wrote: post #265

It is amazing to me that this is the technological solution to eliminating scanning barcodes at check-out lines. The obvious alternative is RFIDs, i.e., just push your cart through a scanner like airport security and all your items appear on the display. (The "automatically bill your Amazon account or credit card" part is optional either way.) From talking to a couple supply chain people, the best explanation I have…

There's no way a cart full of goods will scan properly if you roll through a scanner. RFID scanners don't handle RFID tags being stacked very well.

Maybe the RFID chips in question are just too low end ?

I have read an article about race timing chips runners have in their badges during a marathon and they can apparently handle large number of runners, about 50 per second:

http://www.righto.com/2016/06/inside-tiny-rfid-chip-that-run...

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