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

“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

justwalkout.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 769 posts

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#501

Post by yellow_postit »

hammock wrote: post #336
MattDamonSpace wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 valuabl…

Like how they rolled out call center in a box on AWS which both on boards more to AWS and helps train speech and linguistics models.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#502

Post by rossdavidh »

So, maybe this will be the exception, but: - Amazon bookstores have never been successful, that I've seen; I recall the headline "Amazon sucks all the joy out a physical bookstore" - Amazon took Whole Foods over, and from what my wife tells me it is now kind of a creepy vibe because so many shelves aren't full

People don't just go to retail to get stuff; if that were all, they would all have gone delivery long ago. If the vibe at a store is wrong, they won't go in, for reasons that have more to do with subconscious than conscious reasoning.

I am skeptical.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#503

Post by codazoda »

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…

I don't see it mentioned elsewhere, but Amazon could very easily disrupt credit card companies as part of this play as well.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#504

Post by pacala »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #421
pacala wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GMail solved a thorny problem: convince users to browse the web while logged in, preferably with their real life identity. To then collect and aggregate an extensive personalized dossier of their online activity without any fear of legal repercussions. This is priceless. Then just play the trends: how much space the median user actually uses, user adoption trends, planned storage capacity, storage cost. Possibly the…

That may have been an upside, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the plan at the time. I don't think Google had the notion of "user accounts" before GMail was launched. I think the plan was more likely "serve ads via search engine results, but for email."

That's precisely the point. GMail gave Google user accounts, which made the cost largely immaterial.

The 24/7 global corporate surveillance network has it's roots in Sun and its "The Network is the Computer", as early as 1984. Hard to believe Google just stumbled into a trillion dollar business model two decades later.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#507

Post by bspammer »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #296

This post looked kind of weird to me so I looked up the whois, it's registered to godaddy. Which is odd because it is not the same registrar as amazon.com or aws, and aws operates a domain registration service so I can't imagine a real amazon service would use godaddy. Combined with the fact that there's no concrete plans set in place, it seems really fake.

The certificate is signed by Amazon.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#509

Post by Klinky »

tmilard wrote: post #478
arcadeparade wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of this old IBM ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFhBGKU6HA

Yes, IBM "thinks" the future. Other companies build them. Conclusion : ideas are worthless, Execution is key

>Conclusion : ideas are worthless, Execution is key

This was also often the conclusion found during the Dark Ages. ;D

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#510

Post by castratikron »

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…

While there will always be change in the world it certainly feels like the rate has been getting faster.
Post reply on HN