What I mean is that people are looking at self-driving as the next huge thing in automation that is "around the corner" for some definition of that time frame.
But these stores exist today and make traditional cashiers obsolete in no uncertain terms, potentially across the entire brick and mortar retail industry, and the response is "eh, there's already self checkout lanes".
It really feel to me like one of those moments where people shrug off the iphone when it first launches.
SDCs exist today in limited scale as well. This announcement isn't more momentous than Waymo's recent one, it's just less baked into our thinking that retail jobs are on the chopping block like driving jobs.
But a much much more limited scale and years away from widespread usage. It's one ideal city hard coded into the technology vs tens of real stores using the real technology that could be installed in a 3rd party store today.
I could be wrong but the phrasing of the FAQ on on the information page seems to suggest 3rd party stores using this tech could start popping up in a few months.
To me the Waymo announcement would be as momentous if they said:
> How long will it take to install [self driving] technology in a [car]?
> The installation of the technology can take as little as a few weeks from the time we have access to your [car].
I suppose the page doesn't directly explain when they will start the installations. But from the phrasing, I wouldn't be surprised if we hear an announcement of some sort of launch plans with a partner store in the next Month. It seems relatively imminent. Of course, I think there were other Amazon Go related announcements that didn't pan so who knows.
