
First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes - brk
http://blog.hubspot.com/uattr/real-purpose-of-amazon-delivery-drones
======
grellas
I am not a technology expert and I am not a marketing expert but, as a
consumer, I have moved gradually over the years from using Amazon primarily
for online book-buying to using it extensively for all kinds of retail buying
needs. The Prime service has been central to that experience because human
psychology appears to be perverse and something so small as "free" 2-day
shipping, though not really free, seems to have given me ample incentive to
buy from Amazon when I could just as easily have bought from someone else. I
am not sure why exactly. It just proved the path of least resistance. Being
fast, efficient, and reliable, it worked and makes me a reflexive Amazon
customer. I buy books, DVDs, select grocery items, and quite an array of other
things from Amazon that I could just as easily be buying from others and
"free" delivery via Prime has been a major factor in shaping that habit for
good or for bad as concerns whatever my true self interests may be in the
buying choices. What is more, as video streaming has begun to supplant things
such as DVDs, I have moved somewhat zombie-like into Amazon's Prime streaming
service for the reason, among others, that I have developed my reflexive
relationship with the company and have found it easy to try their other
offerings before I will move to offerings of other vendors. Again, this has
all been bundled with Amazon's Prime service, with which the company now
packages a broad range of "free" streaming resources into the annual cost of
the service.

If my experience is at all typical of other consumers, I would guess that
Amazon's Prime strategy is central to its whole attempt to conquer worldwide
retailing and therefore that amazing delivery capacity lies at its heart,
whether instantly via things such as video streaming or highly expedited in
the case of tangible products.

Now Amazon could continue to rest comfortably upon its existing
accomplishments by which it has used third-party delivery services to achieve
a big part of its goals. But it is not. Indeed, it is spending huge sums of
money to build massive warehousing facilities all over the place in support of
a long-term plan to achieve super-fast delivery. And, in doing so, it has
abandoned its former (and highly effective) strategy of trying to avoid
physical "presence" in the various states in order to avoid having to hold
back sales/use taxes from its customers.

So, fanciful or not in their present state of technological development and in
the present state of legal and regulatory tangles that might arise, drones of
the type shown in Amazon's promotional materials can hardly be called a simple
marketing ploy to divert attention from some otherwise critical publicity
affecting Amazon or its founder. The huge benefits to Amazon as a universal
retailer that might from such a delivery mechanism are stupendous and obvious.
If it should prove unfeasible to gain these benefits owing to technological
limitations, that is one thing. If regulators should attempt to freeze
delivery mechanisms to current forms and bar new ones such as drones, that is
yet another thing. Such barriers may prove insuperable and cause the effort to
fail. But to accuse Amazon of not being ready, willing, and able to devote
even vast resources to the potential use of drones as part of its broader
strategy - and instead to be using this as a mere publicity stunt - is, in my
view, to miss the obvious. Amazon has a long-term goal of becoming the primary
shopping source for millions of consumers across a broad range of products. It
wants to leverage technology in ways that help remove the physical-presence
advantage used by traditional brick-and-mortar retailers. If it can do so by
building vast warehouses and then finding a magic way of delivering products
to consumers in ways that better what they can do by visiting the local retail
store, why not go for it. And not just go for it but _really_ go for it, with
a massive investment of time, energy, and capital with the long-term view of
using this strategy to achieve potential exponential growth over competitors.

Whatever else this is, it cannot be mere vaporware. The fact that its
announcement may have been accompanied by conventional marketing hype and by
what may have even been a cynical deal with news outlets to agree to promote
it on a big shopping day only confirms the seriousness of the effort, in my
view. People like to get excited about exciting possibilities. Steve Jobs knew
that and his way of presenting has become legendary. Mr. Bezos has some of
that same flair and, when combined with adept entrepreneurial skills, stands
to make an amazing mark in the annals of commerce. He may win in the end or he
may lose. But he is going for the big win and he is doing it with flair.

You may like what Amazon is doing or you may hate it but it can't be denied
that it is bold, daring, and very real. The author here misses it altogether
in suggesting otherwise.

~~~
bandushrew
"Whatever else this is, it cannot be mere vaporware. "

I am unclear on why not, exactly? 4-5 years before it appears, with the
obvious possibility that it never does for regulatory reasons, technology
reasons....

At this point I wouldn't call it vaporware, its not that far along.

It is still a fantasy. A _nice_ fantasy. I loved the idea. but, for now, just
a fantasy.

Check back in 4-5 years (or 5-10 years?) when something has actually been
delivered to the market, and lets have a glass of whiskey and be amazed at the
futuristic technology.

~~~
cynwoody
A startup in Australia, Flirtey,† has partnered with a university textbook
seller to deliver books via hexacopter on/near campus. They are hoping to
begin operation next March. When the drone arrives, the customer presses a
button on their smartphone app, and the package is lowered down to them.

†[http://www.damngeeky.com/2013/10/16/14713/parcel-drone-
will-...](http://www.damngeeky.com/2013/10/16/14713/parcel-drone-will-deliver-
packages-in-australia-from-march-2014.html)

Video: [http://vimeo.com/76606906](http://vimeo.com/76606906)

~~~
bandushrew
Yeah, that makes sense to me.

Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a
few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the
US.

it _is_ a fantastic use of technology, I genuinely hope amazon manages to
deliver.

~~~
downandout
> Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a
> few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across
> the US.

Not necessarily. When a new address comes up, a human operator might takes a
look at a satellite image of the address and give the drone an appropriate
location to land on the property. That data would then be stored. 15 seconds
with a human, one time only, is all it would take to make this easy in most
neighborhoods.

~~~
VolatileVoid
That's not at all the problem.

What about navigating TFRs? Class B airspace? What about failures of the
rotors whilst flying over heavily populated areas? Will these things be
equipped with TCAS to avoid oncoming traffic? What happens if the path-finding
algorithm to get from Amazon's warehouse to your house goes batshit insane and
flies it in the approach path to LAX? Who files the flight plan for each of
these things?

To quote Steve Yegge, "people will die... if it's YOU... you're going to be
really pissed off." [0]

[0] [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/have-you-ever-
lega...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized-
marijuana.html)

~~~
annnnd
Not to mention UFOs. And as someone said, the drones would make archery a very
popular sport again. ;)

~~~
silverbax88
Think skeet shooting ... with a reward
[http://www.pvponline.com/comic/2013/12/03/last-minute-
shoppi...](http://www.pvponline.com/comic/2013/12/03/last-minute-shopping)

------
ljd
It seems obvious to me that Bezos took this one public so early to garner
public support so that the FAA can't just sit on it forever. All of Amazon's
other initiatives didn't need some federal regulator to OK it before they
could start selling it.

I think this is an effective solution to getting a notoriously slow agency to
move on an item. No one wants to be seen as stopping innovation, not even the
FAA.

~~~
RandallBrown
I agree. Even if Amazon doesn't end up launching its own drones, you can be
sure that Fedex and UPS will eventually. That helps Amazon too.

~~~
buckbova
UPS is a slow moving entity because of its enormous size and culture. Their
delivery system was more or less handled manually until about 10 years ago. 15
years ago they were still using punch clocks for hourly workers. "Eventually"
could mean 25-50 years from now.

------
tptacek
It seems disingenuous for this blog to suggest that MacKenzie Bezos's negative
review of the Bezos book was part of the same orchestrated spin campaign as
the drone story. That review didn't simply object to the tone or the message
of the book, but also pointed out specific factual errors the book made,
errors that were later tacitly acknowledged by the author.

~~~
pflats
I agree. I'm totally on board that there was some serious negotiation by
Amazon (Prime) to get the piece on Amazon Prime Air to air the eve of "Cyber
Monday" so you'd see as much Amazon Prime as possible.

I'd believe that it's intentionally out there to put quiet pressure on the FAA
to lighten its regulations. I could even see it being run to distract from the
Mother Jones-esque pieces about how terrible it is to be a seasonal employee
at an Amazon Warehouse.

But this being a reaction to the Bezos book? That seems like a bit much.

~~~
IBM
But it's not just the book (which by the way is getting excellent reviews from
people other than Jeff Bezos' wife). It's about the worker strike in Germany
and the other negative news about Amazon. They are following the Google
playbook of creating goodwill and good PR through these types of "innovations"
that are destined to remain as vaporware or never really considered by the
company to be a real business for them to get into. Companies like Google and
Amazon need it terribly because their businesses on their own aren't going to
create the type of goodwill that releasing a product like the iPhone and iPad
does for Apple.

[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-02/amazons-
dron...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-02/amazons-drone-fleet-
delivers-what-bezos-wants-an-image-of-ingenuity)

~~~
phaus
Positive book reviews have little to do with accuracy. The overwhelming
majority of people that are reading the book have no way of knowing what the
truth is.

~~~
IBM
The reviews I'm talking about aren't the reviews on the Amazon book listing
but reviews that address the investigative quality of the book and its
sourcing. Critical reviews, not reviews by the average Joe.

~~~
SimHacker
I have a friend who worked down the hall from Bezos for five years after
Amazon was founded. If there is anything in that book that states or implies
that Bezos in an insane power hungry tyrant, then it's spot-on accurate. That
creepy forced laugh of his you can experience in the 60 minutes interview
should give it away.

He told me: Your reaction to the laugh is healthy. You should be scared of
this guy. He can't get enough power. When I answered an online quiz "11
reasons your boss may be a psychopath" (or something like that) i gave him 10
1/2 out of 11.

------
swalsh
People say that there's usually about a 10 year lag before tech from the
military enters civilian use. Since drones showed up roughly 2003, it stands
to reason that 2013 is when we should first starting seeing the tech become
civilian viable. In fact that seems to be true, there's a whole lot of DIY
material out there, and that's from people who don't have real world
experience. I wouldn't be surprised if as military contracts wind down the
large amount of people who just developed a new set of expertise may try to
break out into the private sector. The only thing stopping the tech seems to
be the FAA. Obviously its not something to take lightly, there are real safety
concerns here... but its not completely science fiction.

Why do we accept that modern warfare can be fought almost entirely with drones
(libya?) but when it comes to civilian applications it's a fairy tail
publicity stunt?

I think bezos wants to turn a profit, and lowering delivery costs, and giving
faster service might only make his company that much more valuable. I don't
doubt for a second that this is a genuine effort.

~~~
ye
You're confusing huge ridiculously expensive military drones, which are
essentially small planes, with what Amazon is showing us, which are
essentially small helicopters.

There's no way in the world these tiny drones can fly 10 miles each way, carry
5lbs of payload, deliver the package perfectly on the driveway/doorstep, and
cost low enough to not be a financial nightmare. That's not even accounting
for dealing with FAA, weather issues, safety issues.

There will need to be a few technological revolutions before it works. #1 -
battery technology. Current batteries just can't handle long enough flights.

~~~
criley2
Sorry, but who are you? Who are you to stand up and call Amazon's idea
unviable?

Why is their idea unviable? Because they have no proof?

Well you certainly proved how unviable the idea is with _your_ lack of proof.

Quite frankly, when it comes to Bezos vs "ye", I have to say that the
billionaire owner of one of the most successful stores in our world is
SLIGHTLY more credible than "ye", random commenter who has no domain
experience and no evidence for literally a single word they said.

I mean honestly, in a conversation about credibility and evidence, you thought
providing neither makes for a good argument?

~~~
ytNumbers
It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a
one pound coconut.

~~~
TylerE
Comparatively inexpensive (<$500) consumer quadcopters already have 100%
payload fractions (e.g. 1lb of payload per lb of vehicle weight), so 1.5:1
isn't such a jump from there.

------
37prime
As soon as I saw the name Dan Lyons as the author, I son’t even bother reading
it. His past articles are filled with nonsense.

~~~
jasonlotito
Good catch. Thanks for that.

------
snowwrestler
This piece is right on. Amazon package drones are total vaporware at this
point; the only reason to announce them is to improve the competitive
positioning of Amazon in the press.

This is no different than the "slate" announcement by Microsoft and HP at CES
2010, which was widely panned and never produced any actual products for sale.
But for a short time, it put MS in all the news stories about the iPad.

~~~
headShrinker
You can call it vaporware, but someone is going to utilize this technology.
Companies in the other countries already are.

The technology is so new, and has yet to get to it's pinnacle. Bezos properly
address the element that is missing, "redundancy". Whether you like it or not,
these things will be flying above your head within 3 years. Whether Amazon is
the one to do it? You think it's going to be UPS, FedEx, or USPS? My money is
on Amazon.

------
benjamincburns
In all of the criticism, I haven't seen anything remarking on the energy cost
for this. I can hear a strawman in the audience saying "But drones are
tiny/electric/cheap!" Not at these scales. Consider the (lack of) efficiency
of quadcopters, the weights and distances involved, and the total sales volume
for this service in even a small test market. I'd buy that flight itself is a
viable option over wheeled vehicles when you consider more direct transit,
reduction in delays due to traffic, and the reduction in weight of the
delivery vehicle, but I'd imagine this advantage would only exist for fixed-
wing delivery vehicles, not quad/hex/octo-copters.

$20 says that if this ever happens in the real world, the delivery vehicles
are mechanically _very_ different from what's shown in the promo video.

~~~
gutnor
What I wonder is why nobody is pointing out that delivering less than 2kg in
30 min in a radius of 10 km can be done freely on a cheap pizza using plain
old human labour.

I fail to imagine at what stage Amazon drone become cheaper considering the
reliability of drone and the complexity of navigating a dense urban
environment (I assume it is to be used there) Also, if it can be done cheaply
enough, takeaways will eventually use the same system. I wonder how that will
scale ...

~~~
__Joker
While the pizza delivery will be cheap now but given time for the technology
to mature and then the scale of the operation will make drone technology more
cheaper. Obviously it will take a quite a time before it adds to profit line.
As usual Amazon will keep absorbing the losses for that time and it is well
equipped to that, if amazon history tells us anything.

------
ChuckMcM
Well that didn't take long[1] :-) Perhaps Bezos is taking his cues from Google
who trots out their self driving car when ever they want to boost their image
with the public. It is interesting to watch from the perspective of companies
balancing the 'reality' that they are doing everything they can to maximize
their influencer, revenue, Etc. And still keep a friendly face on it. There
was a time that the only information the public got about a company was their
advertisements.

I subscribe to the notion that this particular stunt was both, technology
investigation and PR piece. It sets Amazon apart from Walmart as "new
technology" which carries a bit of cachet with the buying public, and there
are some very real and interesting questions that can be informed by building
a prototype system (which refers back to our discussion a while ago about
actually doing something to figure out how hard it is _really_ ) and since it
is so far out all it does is cause worry on the part of competitors.

Seems like a reasonable strategy to me.

[1] A blog post arguing some technology demo is a PR stunt

------
siglesias
Who cares? It sparks the public imagination and gets people excited for the
future. It's the kind of thing that can get a child interested in robotics or
can give entrepreneurs a new level of insight into where commerce is headed.
It sets a bar for ambition. Also, how often is it that we're dazzled with TED
talks showcasing university research projects that promise the world and never
make it to market? Is the point, ultimately, _to_ make it to market, or to
submit something bold to the consciousness?

Secondly, how will it work out for Amazon, in its coveted "long-run," if it
erodes public trust by showing something it doesn't _really_ think will ship?
I think showing it in public gives them an onus to execute. As others have
mentioned, it also creates an onus for the FAA to take this challenge
seriously and to accelerate its thinking about this new direction.

~~~
javajosh
Indeed - I wish more companies were goaded into doing interesting, exciting
things in reaction to scathing biographies. Quick, someone write a scathing
biography of Elon Musk - we'll have people on Mars in 3 years!

------
samspenc
Ouch, a bit harsh, but my first question after reading this was: why are
Hubspot and its CEO so upset about the CBS piece?

~~~
gurumx
I'm a dev at HubSpot and though I have no way of knowing this for sure, I
don't think our CEO was involved in this blog post.

We have a lot of blog posts, and I don't _think_ they're meant to represent
the views of the company.

------
zallarak
While I agree the 60 minutes segment seemed like a commercial, I don't
understand why one would waste time attacking this innovation (not the
helicopters, but the logistics behind it). A more meaningful discussion would
be what the actual objections of the FAA are, what the repercussions of drones
in the air are, etc.

------
casca
In the UK, Waterstones (equivalent to Barnes and Noble) have announced a
competing product:
[http://blog.waterstones.com/?p=15525](http://blog.waterstones.com/?p=15525)

------
inigoesdr
I'm not sure the target audience for 60 minutes is that similar to the
audience that would care about drone delivery or Cyber Monday so much.
Suggesting that Amazon may have intentionally wanted the story aired the day
before Cyber Monday seems like a bit of a stretch. Also, the fact that Amazon
wants to do drone delivery in the future has been discussed previously, and
they still say it's a few years out, so this isn't much of a story to begin
with.

~~~
mpclark
It's the other way around, really. News organisations want to be relevant, so
will all have been looking around for Cyber Monday stories. This "narrative
shift" is just a way for Amazon to make sure the stories that ran prior to and
during Cyber Monday were not about working conditions in its warehouses, its
international tax arrangements, or the death of independent retailers.

An organisation can very effectively dictate the precise timing of a story's
running using tools such as an embargo (which determines the opening of the
publishing window) and pre-arranged release of the story to other media (which
tells an outlet with an exclusive that they should be publishing before this
time). So a conversation along the lines of "We've got this great story, would
you treat it properly if we gave it to you on 1 December, ahead of when it
hits the wires at 8am on 2 December?" does the trick nicely.

------
neakor
Seems like a long stretch. Who cares if the CEO is a nice guy? Steve Jobs is
known as a terrible boss, but no one cares. The only thing matters to the mass
consumers and the company's customers is the products the company produces.

~~~
alan_cx
Sadly, yes. Further, people dont really care where or how products are made.
We get all this negative PR about how appalling working conditions are where
many top selling brands are made, but there is no noticeable dent in sales as
a result. If shoppers cared, they would shop differently.

However, its a lot to do with the egos of these CEOs, and what not. You and I
may not care how nice or horrible these people may or may not be, but the
people getting the negativity do. They dont like the idea that the public
think they are not very nice, or what ever.

So, I'd suggest its possible its more about individual ego, than sales. Sales
is a convenient excuse.

------
phaus
>You line up Charlie Rose to do one of his famous softball-tossing puff
pieces..

You can't claim that Amazon destroyed the credibility of CBS and at the same
time claim that one of their top anchors regularly gives "soft-ball"
interviews. Well, to be honest you can, but you'll sound like an idiot.

------
gress
I haven't seen anyone mention another key PR benefit of announcing this early:
to take the wind out of Google announcing delivery via self-driving car.

Google is probably more threatening to Amazon than any other company, and they
have a clear interest in attacking physical good delivery in a manner that is
deflationary relative to Amazon - almost certainly by using self-driving
vehicles to provide local delivery to existing retailers, gaining access to
the inventory databases in the process.

Google likes to do PR stunts to project an image of futuristic technological
leadership. It looks like they have a competitor.

------
adestefan
What the fuck is with all the hit pieces today? Who the hell cares what comes
about it. It was an interesting little side show.

Guess this is the story that's going to rack up page views for at least the
beginning of the week.

~~~
Brakenshire
They're not hit pieces, they're educated responses to a marketing
announcement.

~~~
girvo
Pfft. It's a hit piece, and I don't even like Amazon.

------
ww520
Vaporware aside, revealing the Amazon Drone project before Cyber Monday was an
enormous PR coup, with all the press tucked along. Kudos to Amazon's marketing
department.

------
dkrich
_Amazon somehow got CBS and 60 Minutes to create a 14-minute free ad spot for
Amazon on the eve of this huge shopping day._

This is a fairly one-sided assessment of the situation. CBS and 60 Minutes
benefit as much from the piece airing on the eve of Black Monday as Amazon,
arguably more so, since Amazon needs little advertisement for its services.

I watched the piece and frankly found it to be somewhat of a puff-piece as
well (Amazon was given too much credit in my opinion for being customer-
centric). However, 60 Minutes caters to a broader audience than most of us, so
they aren't going to get into pricing theory or the merits of Amazon S3. They
describe the company to people as if it is the first time they've ever gotten
a glimpse inside the website, because many people know little about it or its
history.

60 Minutes almost always times its pieces to coincide with related events, and
I think it makes the stories more interesting because of it.

Edit: If the goal of the piece was in fact to conjure up free positive
publicity for Amazon I have to believe it worked. Last night my FB news feed
was a flurry with people posting their love of Amazon and how they were now
going to be loyal customers because "Amazon puts the customer first."

~~~
brc
What surprises me is the naivety of most people who seem to think that 60
minutes and the like follow their nose for stories instead of having
complicated marketing and PR deals behind them. There is no way that 15
minutes of sunday night prime-time TV is just given away to a puff-piece
because the shows editors thought it might make a good story.

Next thing people will be shocked that Oprah is paid to endorse products.

------
bhartzer
I find this whole publicity stunt by Amazon curiously similar to the publicity
stunt that Domino's did back in June, where they deliver pizzas via drones.

~~~
jaybna
Do no one remember TacoCopter?
[http://tacocopter.com/](http://tacocopter.com/)

Most brilliant PR move ever. #suckers

------
ams6110
CBS and 60 minutes lost their credibility long before this.

~~~
joedevon
Took the words out of my mouth. It's mostly puff pieces nowadays.

------
noonespecial
Perhaps it was prior art. I can already feel the ground rumbling with the
coming stampede of "X... but with teh _drones_!" patents.

~~~
Crito
_" The Tacocopter of [Something]"_ is one of my favorite answers to the _" The
something of something"_ startup idea game. _" The Tacocopter of Twitter"_ I
think has been my best so far; some sort of telegraph service that delivers
your printed telegraph message with a quadcopter instead of a courier.

------
downandout
The CBS interview was primarily focused on Amazon's technology. It was only
fitting that they show off something they are still tinkering with that shows
what the future might be. The drones are easily possible - the technology
already exists. If Amazon doesn't do it, lots of other private companies will.

But I am a little shocked that this cool little announcement has brought
Amazon's critics out of the woodwork. IMO, if you try to ride the coattails of
other things getting press just to get your very negative views out, you are
just as bad as the entity you are criticizing. Congratulations, a few more
people read your negative opinion of Amazon and its founder than would have
had you not tied it into the drone story. Nearly all of them will still be
shopping on Amazon this Christmas.

~~~
ghaff
I don't really see it as about criticism of Amazon--though there was that tone
in Lyons' piece. Amazon has a PR department and they did their job remarkably
well in this case in that they succeeded in landing essentially a puff piece
about future technological concepts related to fast parcel delivery with a
supposedly serious journalistic institution the day before the busiest online
shopping day of the year.

Kudos to Amazon PR. Not so much to 60 Minutes.

------
Bulkington
Drone/autonomous vehicle impact on supply chain discussed here on Saturday,
ahead of 60 Mins piece.

[http://www.ccjdigital.com/self-driving-planes-trains-
trucks-...](http://www.ccjdigital.com/self-driving-planes-trains-trucks-will-
lead-supply-chain-redesign/?full-article=true)

Got the Reddit treatment here:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1rrvxb/selfdrivi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1rrvxb/selfdriving_planes_trains_trucks_will_lead_supply/)

Conclusion: Gobolinks

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klecksography#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klecksography#History)

------
lukethomas
Personal opinion, but this article should be on someone's personal blog, not
promoted through Hubspot. It seems after a quick Google search, Dan Lyons has
stirred up quite a bit of controversy in the past, and it's probably something
I would avoid getting into from a company POV.

[http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-
wh...](http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-whores-and-
paid-apologists-welcome-to-the-silicon-cesspool/)

[http://parislemon.com/post/17587323277/bat-shit-
crazy](http://parislemon.com/post/17587323277/bat-shit-crazy)

------
hosh
I think people keep forgetting that Bezos has a longer planning horizon than
most people. "... won't realistically arrive in the real world for another
four or five years, which in realspeak means they're a decade or more away."
Sure, Amazon used this as an opportunity for an image boost, sales boost ...
but what else does this move also do?

Reminds me a bit of: [http://xkcd.com/1287/](http://xkcd.com/1287/)

People who want to be ornery will find reasons to act ornery.

------
Zaephyr
If Prime Air happens, I predict a boom in the illicit 'package intercept'
business.

Knock a drone down, "win" a prize is going to appeal to percentage of the
population.

~~~
jrockway
When I lived in a big apartment building, sometimes my Amazon packages would
go missing. The thief got an EVO 4G screen protector, a micro USB cable, and
some hand towels.

Most Amazon orders aren't expensive things. Going to jail for a few years for
hijacking an aircraft just isn't worth it, when you can just wait for the
package to be delivered and steal it from someone's doorstep. Even then,
probably not worth it.

------
coldcode
I don't think they had much credibility left.

------
egocodedinsol
That Charlie Rose refuses to turn his show into "Trash TV: Business Edition"
counts toward his credibility, not against it.

------
johngrefe
Bezos attempting to be the next great master product revealer, but a barnums
style gag and prank won't have lasting media staying power like jobs. That and
he could improve his speaking ability.

I would have been more impressed if he showed off a fleet of
electric/autonomous self driven deliver robot trucks, because that is more
realistic to amazon.

~~~
AsymetricCom
End customers don't care about your CEO's speaking ability.

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nhangen
I think the real reason people are frustrated with Amazon's announcement is
because Amazon is getting/will get the credit for the drone delivery idea
despite the fact that numerous hackers/engineers/companies have been working
on (and presenting) this idea for years.

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ck2
Even the still for the youtube video seems to have picked out the two big
honking signs for "amazon prime"

[http://img.youtube.com/vi/6in-
MZeeeGk/hqdefault.jpg](http://img.youtube.com/vi/6in-MZeeeGk/hqdefault.jpg)

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__pThrow
I predicted this about a week ago in some thread complaining about Amazon
delivery when I said I lived in Texas and my packages were being delivered by
Blue Origin, which worked fine, but one time left a big hole where my car once
was.

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joshdance
I don't agree that 60 Mins loses its credibility. Some of my friends and
family didn't believe me until I told them it was 60 Mins. Then they believed.
If that isn't credibility, I don't know what is.

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ry0ohki
It should not surprise anyone that a large amount of articles, stories, etc...
in every publication, every day are simply because of PR. Not sure why Amazon
is being picked on here.

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CraigJPerry
Delivery drones makes for more interesting and stimulating news than the usual
b movie plots involving terrorists that come up any time the d word is
mentioned.

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danielharan
This finally makes sense, much more sense than advanced drones being used to
deliver dead trees.

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easy_rider
Nice, buy a $10 book. Own a $1000 drone.

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blahbl4hblahtoo
This is almost exactly how I felt when I saw that Google was "taking on
death".

Some of these SV companies are better than others at this kind of thing.
Amazon, Google, and Apple have this ability to make otherwise skeptical
journalists just turn their brains off...Google's "death stunt" was the cover
of Newsweek for god's sake.

