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Amazon Prime Air

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Re: Amazon Prime Air

#451

Post by why-el »

pavs wrote: post #391
diminish wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is, drone delivery was discussed already here on HN. A lot of the details were already envisioned and suggested. A lot of the commenters on this thread think it's a new idea or its's new here on HN. This is a good PR move for Amazon(edit: equal to Google's self driving car in PR power). It's likely they got inspired by some of the HN discussions. I hope they don't invent silly patents around it, such as "on…

You give HN and its small eco-chamber way too much credit.

This. I don't think it's realized how insignificant to the real world our discussions are sometimes (note: sometimes). They are lovely, intellectual, and interesting, but not as important as you go about your day thinking they are.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#453

Post by ck2 »

rmoriz wrote: post #452
ck2 wrote: post #431

April fools was months ago.

but Cyber Monday is today. Awesome marketing stunt to get free TV ads and media coverage the day before.

"cyber monday" is the april fools of marketing, there aren't actually any good sales today, it is meant for people who feel left out from the consumerism

But does Amazon even need marketing like this? I mean everyone price checks Amazon, even especially while looking in a physical store.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#454

Post by roel_v »

DufusM wrote: post #254
kyro wrote: post #152

This concept and forward thinking is of the type I make a conscious effort to protect from skepticism and naysayers. Aside from any obvious or glaring safety issues, ideas like this one, that teeter on the reality-joke line, are the exact ones that bring about true disruption. And that's why I encourage everyone around me to keep an open and forgiving mind, like you would with a child. Will Amazon Prime Air work? I d…

I hope it works too - it seems so cool. But I am not sure this is the big problem in this space. Current delivery time = 1 day for last mile + >1 day for warehouse -> local area This method reduces the last mile delivery time down to 30 mins but it is not clear how the second part would be optimized down. At least, without losing the value proposition of Amazon - giant centralized warehouses instead of local retail o…

By having more local warehouses that stock the top x most sold things. 100% of the things I can readily remember that I ordered the last 2 or 3 months are so common that they were all in stock in the local shop that I bought most of them at (a large online retailer here in the Netherlands has 6 or 8 or so shops across the country, for local pick up or to try stuff in-store). And they were not the most common things either - a steam wall paper remover, a router (of the woodworking type, not the networking type), a specific type of headphone. If they can have those levels of stock in high street bricks and mortar shops, they could have even larger inventories when they could store them in fully automated warehouses in cheap industrial areas. The accuracy in stock prediction ('shop stock', not 'financial markets stock', obviously) is jaw-dropping.

Man this is going to destroy high street shopping (even further, I might add) - imagine being able to order 10 outfits for trying on from your own home, try them on and send the 9 you don't want back right away, in less time than it would have taken you to just drive to wherever you can buy it off line. If clothing (and other main street) shops are having a hard time now, wait until they have to compete with this...

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#455

Post by greyshi »

michaelt wrote: post #440
jmduke wrote: post #176

(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not for anything related to this. This is the first time I'm learning of Prime Air.) I'm somewhat disheartened by the skepticism of a lot of comments from HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Not stuff like "I wonder how they'll handle adverse weather" (which I think is intellectually interesting) but stuff like "As soon as one of these kills a dog it's done for". What merit is there in rootin…

Textbook drone delivery: http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/14/zookal-starts-world-first-d... Cake drone delivery: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1020621... Pizza drone delivery: http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/dominos-tests-delivery-pizza-r... Parcel delivery drones: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57601531-76/drones-in-chin... Beer delivery drones: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/brandin…

Those companies are very different from Amazon.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#456

Post by hrrsn »

zone411 wrote: post #246
raghus wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's page reads like a Google April 1st post. Or maybe someday we'll look back at these comments like we do at http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/

Actually, these comments are not as discredited as one might think in hindsight. iPod sales weren't spectacular until the 4th generation of the iPod classic and until iPod Mini was introduced 3 years later. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Ipod_sale... I think it's valuable to point out the problems with the current technology and regulations like scoot did, even though we all realize that in a few…

One could say the same about the iPhone - http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/50104de669beddc2110...

Or really any 'disruptive' product.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#457

Post by roel_v »

So, this is the wave of the future. Now, how do I make money on this, apart from buying Amazon stock or starting a drone company (which are going under in droves, I should add)? Is this going to be a first-past-the-post thing? I can't see how any other retailer will be able to compete with this, once they start rolling it out, and assuming they won't be offering DDaaS (drone delivery as a service - you heard it here first folks). I'm not sure how much the marginal delivery costs for Amazon are going to be, but this might give them a 10% (!) increased profit in an already very low-margin market? That would obliterate most competition.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#458

Post by xerophtye »

Houshalter wrote: post #411
dakrisht wrote: post #130

This is an awesome idea of course. It's a glimpse into the future. I remember tweeting with Chris Anderson of 3D Robotics about a year ago about autonomous package delivery from A > B. I'm sure Bezos and team started nerding out on this concept years ago. Eventually, "vehicles" the size of UPS trucks will be delivering packages autonomously all over the world. This is definitely a glimpse into that day. And it won't…

>The FAA situation. Drones are going to have _very_ restricted airspace especially in populated metro areas, if the FAA grants them these privileges at all. If you look at Los Angeles/SF/NYC/DC/Boston, you see airspace that is so overcrowded that I just don't see how drones are going to be zipping around here. How do you figure? Do you realize how big the sky is? For every square foot of land there are tons of layers…

Ummm.... I couldn't see that video (restrictions on work internet) but AFAIK such small drones can fly up to a certain altitude. Sure you have an insanely large amount of sky up their but can these machines access that?

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#459

Post by viraptor »

ekianjo wrote: post #414
jessriedel wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point being made by the people who say a single killed dog could nix the program, in fact, it's the opposite. The point is that the public responds irrationally to new minute dangers like this. Commenters pointing this out aren't rooting for failure, and they're not making an argument about the danger. They're just observing that this thing has failure modes because people are dumb.

> They're just observing that this thing has failure modes because people are dumb. Yeah, and people were damn scared of electricity when it was first introduced to the masses and many did not want it. Go forward 10, 20 years down the road and it was massively adopted. Of course there are always failure modes, but what's more critical to look at is, what's the benefit of this new technology, and will the benefits out…

The first electric installations and equipment were relatively dangerous actually. No good isolation of metal parts, no separate earth wire, metal body, etc. Things like hair driers were often electrocuting people.

Even the improvements took a long time to become popular. I remember some electric tools from 80s that were known to zap people from time to time, but "that's just the way they are". So yeah... I suppose that the first people to adopt electricity at their homes actually did have something to worry about.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#460

Post by xerophtye »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #213
dakrisht wrote: post #130

This is an awesome idea of course. It's a glimpse into the future. I remember tweeting with Chris Anderson of 3D Robotics about a year ago about autonomous package delivery from A > B. I'm sure Bezos and team started nerding out on this concept years ago. Eventually, "vehicles" the size of UPS trucks will be delivering packages autonomously all over the world. This is definitely a glimpse into that day. And it won't…

The "Why" has to do with increasing market size for Amazon. If they can deliver small items to you in 30 minutes with no delivery fee, all sorts of things you need in the very short term stop being a trip to the store and become a drone shipment from Amazon. This opens up HUGE markets for them. I also think people are thinking of the distribution network a bit wrong. They can keep a large number of items in a small s…

Yeah they can make use of the model employed by tesco in South Korea[1]. Instead of trips to the grocery store, you can just tell amazon to deliver to your place. Ran out of batteries for your remote? Amazon! Heck, Amazon Book store would benefit LOADS from this. So yes, not only does this open up new markets, it also improves their existing businesses as well. No one likes to wait. And they could cash in on that! (Not to mention it would be pretty cool receiving stuff by drones) :P

[1] http://gajitz.com/worlds-first-virtual-grocery-store-now-ope...

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