Amazon makes dozens of "products" every year, to do press releases, to sell more Amazon stock/keep the stock price high. Most of these products never become real.
Even AWS was a fake product-- they claimed it was "the infrastructure that ran Amazon.com", which was a straight up lie. (I worked for the company at the time.) All they had was S3. This product stuck to the wall and grew and became a real product over time, and so they backfilled.
This strategy works for them because when something disappears (remember google glass? Yeah, it really is gone, it made no sense to begin with, but they won't admit it) .... nobody remembers it.
Amazon wasted so much time on nonsense. We had 4 reorgs a year and a lot of chaos because they were constantly spinning up random teams for BS initiatives -- many of whome were nothing more than a press release.
I'm not saying this is wrong (except the dishonesty about AWS)...just that Amazon announcing a product doesn't mean Amazon will be providing that product.
Here's a key thing that people miss about amazon-- it is NOT a tech company. It should not be mentioned along with Google, Apple & Facebook.
Amazon is a retailer, most of the employees are retailers and the whole management structure is retail guys. Not engineers. Outside of AWS there's very little engineering resources at all given what they need to do, just to maintain the core business.
They're running 20 year old code that 10 years ago was crashing regularly-- eg Amazon.com going down so you can't b uy cell phones or whatever.
I've worked for a lot of startups and a lot of big tech companies, like Apple, Microsoft etc. Amazon is not a tech company.
If you're an engineer you should never go work there-- the management is all non-engineer types. My bosses training was to be a prison guard! He could barely handle excel but was criticizing our code. His boss was no better- a DMV reject. (literally), and all the way up to Bezos who is not an engineer either.
My boss, by the way was dealing weed in the PacMed garage to other employees. The entire team left because he was such an asshole-- and he got promoted as a result!
Company is pretty much a joke.
I know on HN you're not allowed(?) to say negative things about big "tech" companies. I may be shadowbanned for ti, but Amazon was a terrible, TERRIBLE place to work. Microsoft had too much bureaucracy and was too "corporate" for me, but you can understand why they were the way they were-- amazon on the other hand was absolutely terrible. It's run by people who are extremely arrogant and have no regard for anybody -not investors, not suppliers, and least of all employees. It is the most employee hostile place I ever worked. All advancement is political and because of stack ranking its really easy to stab people in the back. Terrible company. (I've had a lot of jobs, worked for disorganized startups-- but the key difference is whether management gives a damn about employees or not. Amazon they don't, they're hostile, everywhere else has not been that way- even bad management is usually just incompetent, not hostile.)
- people do not know what to associate amazon with (it's just a bookstore, right?)
- when they kill off too many project, or too many projects fail, their brand value hurts.
There are other businesses that have many, many product lines, but the most succesful ones (Procter & Gamble, Unilever) almost never use their core brand name and just invent new brands. It makes it more difficult to start, but is better for your brands.
Amazon management is very adept and focosed on blowing smoke up the skirt of employees. "Today is day one!" Even the use of "door desks"-- that cost the company more money than actual desks would-- is done to perpetuate the "we're just a startup, rah rah rah" BS "Culture".
Its' gross manipulation but it also results in people who buy into it being REALLY dedicated to their beliefs-- because deep down people want to believe and Amazon gives them that (even though it then turns around and abuses them.)
They do this for a reason-- by having these mantras and these beliefs about the company, it makes people not believe the negatives or think the negatives don't represent the whole company.
or you just end up on a product that makes no sense, but gotta do it because someone wants it/promised it.
You mean the drone delivery they're actively testing in the UK? The drone delivery they're fighting with the FAA about? The drone delivery they just testified before Congress about?
They're spending an awful lot of time, money, and political capital on something that makes no sense, will never happen, and was just a press release.
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... http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/25/german-dhl...
Beer delivery drones: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1561256/...
Taco delivery drones: http://tacocopter.com/
Burrito delivery drones: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/12/17/burrito-bo...
Sushi delivery drones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y9RKX...
Rubber shoe delivery drones: https://www.techinasia.com/crocs-japan-drone-delivery-crash/
General delivery drones: http://matternet.us/our-vision/ http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21567193-... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11210026/Drone-on... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/02/project_wing_google_...
I think a certain amount of scepticism is warranted :)
Once something has such a strong financial implication, any other obstacle in its way is going to crumble (not to mention that the technology is mature enough today to perform this; the barrier is regulation, and that can change with enough money at stake).
For starters. "To your door" urban drone delivery would be nearly impossible as most urban dwellers live in condos, apartments or densely populated areas where landing or hovering presents real-world, safety, security and logistical concerns most likely impossible to overcome.
The best case urban scenario is Amazon "drop off points". Basically small Amazon stores strategically located throughout a city with designated landing zones for their drones and close proximity to the recipient - so the recipient (or the delivery person) only needs to walk a few blocks max.
In this scenario you're still looking at a "real person" to get the package to the door though.
"To your door" sub-urban and rural (the outskirts as you call it) in theory may be more doable as dwellings tend to have driveways, yards and space. However the challenges of urban still exist. And landing (hovering) on location, on private property adds greater complexity from a safety and legal perspective.
Amazon has an uphill battle to wage with regards to the legality, rules, regulations and safety of operating unmanned air vehicles over "built up areas" in general. Current pending and existing regulations lean towards flightpaths and fly-zones that ensure drones can land safely in the event of an emergency requiring immediate decent (eg. a crash landing).
This means flightpaths over built-up areas of cities and towns in general would be extremely expensive (funding, insurance, lobbying) and most likely impossible under today's regulations.
No matter how safe they're deemed, drones represent a hazard to persons and property, and as such they'll be highly regulated. Amazon won't be able to fly them anywhere, anytime soon. It will take time.
Now, with all that said, a couple years ago the FAA Modernization and Reform Act was signed, providing funding to the Federal Aviation Authority to establish safety rules that deal with all of the above. The funding as I mentioned has already begun ... to the tune of $60 billion or so.
We'll see how the FAA strikes a balance between corporate interest and public safety.
In the mean time Amazon Drone Delivery is mostly a marketing / PR tactic to generate interest and buzz. Strategic in the sense that, on the surface, it sounds like something the public would like to see. It's exciting! Progress! Get the public on your side and "fast-tracked regulation" becomes much more realistic.
If you think about it for a few minutes, you'll realize it's a joke-- like an April Fools joke.
The relentless march of consumerism will completely disrupt how things are consumed, but I am not sure making "getting stuff" so painlessly easy is great for humanity.
I guess it's no different than following the UPS truck and taking the package after they've left, but intercepting a drone farther away (say, over a field somewhere) is probably less conspicuous.
To me, who served 15 years of corporate coding dronery for a Fortune 100 company, that sounds totally awesome.
In all that time I served on three teams.
Citation for this lie please. Because parts of your statement here do not really make sense. For instance that S3 was at one point they only service they had.
(Fwiw, I’ve heard the same thing the OP says elsewhere.)
> (remember google glass? Yeah, it really is gone, it made no sense to begin with, but they won't admit it)
This is an example. Glass was clearly an experimental product to gather information. It was advertised, priced, and distributed like one. If you think it was a failure or is dead, you paid little to no attention to the life cycle.
Throw something at the wall, see what happens, refine, try again. Refining the experiment or using the information to go pursue something else isn't failure. I would assume that Amazon has a similar philosophy, at least to some extent.
"Amazon makes dozens of "products" every year, to do press releases, to sell more Amazon stock/keep the stock price high."
That's quite a leap of logic. Really thought it would have been that $90B of annual revenue that was keeping the stock high.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/30/canada-proves-fertile-groun...
Don't forget they started in books and now sell pretty much everything. Also, the kindle seemed to work out pretty well.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/30/amazon-tes...
Amazon's been making a lot of press lately leaning hard on the FAA to shorten up their paperwork lifecycle for outdoor testing in the US, as well as eliminating the regulatory requirement for line-of-sight flight.
If drone delivery is a dead project, Amazon doesn't know it yet.
If it eats your lunch, my condolences.
[0] http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UBYDXXQ/ref=vas_sf_GoatGrazing
Sports physio treatments?
I've seen a couple other startups like Magic too. It's basically paying people to google for you. That might disrupt the personal assistant space but probably not the market for home services.
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.
Basically everybody in the US uses the phrase "zip-code" informally to mean postal code even when talking about international addresses.
That's exactly the problem. .com <> US
Initially this kind of behavior was "quaint" and amusingly "typically American". But in 2015 it's just f-ing annoying.
TV Wall Mounting (my won mounting bracket): Amazon: $229, Geek Squad: $149.99
Tire installation Services (2 tires): Amazon: $69, Walmart: $12 each
Car Stereo Installation: Amazon: $120, Best Buy: $64.99
I think there is a large market for local listings (e.g. Angies List, Groupon Local etc) but their prices are way too high.
I can't say it's worth double the price until I actually need to use one of their services but I would definitely accept a premium for the hassle free service.
Typical houses are built on the LAMP stack, not Rails. A lot of configuration and many of the conventions embodied are Rick 's and Rick ain't around. There are lots of corner cases built into any structure, and clean quick and straightforward pricing models by necessity come with lots of caveats. There's often a reason a light switch needs replacing that's bigger than just swapping out a part. The old one is still there because replacement was nasty work.
Throw a retail model at this and people expect refunds just because. I no-shit-know someone who had no problem taking back fresh from the ground annual flowers to Home Depot at the end of the season for a refund. The fact that new waste pipes won't work that way is why contracts matter. Good plumbers are busy and paid well, Amazon can't Uberfy them. It's not a commodity skill like driving a clean late model car. Sawzalls are involved and expert experienced judgement is required. They'd do better with web developers because they would nit have to solve the locality problem.
And when he did, they asked him for his driver's license. There's an annual limit to how much you can return without a receipt. Home Depot doesn't care so much, because if you're returning things that way ... they're just giving you store credit. You're going to have to buy something again and eventually, you'll end up spending lots of money there. It works out for them in the long run.
The problem in this area is finding someone you trust and is competent. I don't see how this solves that.
For lower skilled work I guess there might be something here.
Amazon is extending the trust you have for their brand to local workers that they've screened. They'll even guarantee your satisfaction. That's how they're solving trust and competence.
This usually is a torturous process.
Which is genius.
I've gotten a leaking toilet fixed, leaking roof inspected and patched, garage door springs replaced, and a noisy heater tuned up at fixed prices by buying "deals" for them through Amazon Local when I needed something done.
The experience is a million times better than finding a new contractor in the yellow pages for all these kinds of jobs. So many of them now charge a "service call fee" just to come out and do a quote, and won't quote even simple jobs over the phone. If their quote is too high, you've just thrown away money (and wasted half a day) without getting the problem fixed.
I am super enthusiastic about what Amazon's doing here and hope they stay in this market. Looks like I'll finally be putting in that exhaust vent in the bathroom that doesn't have a vent hole cut.
I think anyone's first thought when Amazon gets into a business is that it's dominance is inevitable. Not so sure in this case, I've made tons of marketing pages just like this, hardly a guarantee of success. They'll have to do the hard work of convincing people they can provide quality service. You can't just return a home renovation if it goes wrong.
Of course, I'm in India and I personally might opt for a service like this. There are some startups here but noone of the size and 'integrity' as Amazon.
I'm not sure about the old-school family type people who'd rather go to a local plumber, or carpenter to get their work done.
http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Home-Services-Hire-Grazer/dp/B0...
Maybe I should re-visit it.
