Amazon Reveals It Wants To Deploy Delivery Drones.

[Lunican]

PR stunt right before 'Cyber Monday'?

[chipwich]

Not trying to sound negative ( I am ignorant of Amazon's business performance), but have they actually ever turned a profit?   

All I ever hear about are Amazon's new ventures and how they intend to reduce margins, or take a loss on what they sell to build more loyalty.

[FSBA]

Not trying to sound negative ( I am ignorant of Amazon's business performance), but have they actually ever turned a profit?   

All I ever hear about are Amazon's new ventures and how they intend to reduce margins, or take a loss on what they sell to build more loyalty.

Having next to no margin doesn't mean no margin. Just look at their Kindle tablets. They sell the tablets at cost because you have millions buying e-books from Amazon where you have plenty of margin.

[Tacachale]

PR stunt right before 'Cyber Monday'?

Yeah, pretty much. Seems like it worked though, so good on their marketing team.

[simms3]

Drones won't happen in his timeframe.  Here's the real deal:

1) The drones require a 10-mile radius, which is out of reach of nearly all of Amazon's customers from their distribution centers on the outskirts of major metros (20-30 miles out in many cases).

2) FAA won't give clearance

3) Like others have said, it's a PR grand slam for Cyber Monday


Here's what Amazon is ACTUALLY doing:

1) Building an INSANE distribution network (58 million sf currently, trying to get that to 90 million sf by 2016 - the drone timeframe per se, each one about the size of 20 football fields or greater)

2) Using this distribution network, insiders/analysts believe that Amazon will attempt to directly compete with FedEx and UPS

3) Streaming television (I already use...but they have serious competition here with Sony Television [I also have], Netflix, Hulu, and others)

4) Third-party data centers on the cloud (AWS - Amazon Web Services)


Anyway, the drones are yet another example of the tech elite out here on the west coast ushering in a new world for us all.  This will be a world where some get left behind, and others continue to be a part of a certain "class" of "haves".  Watch out - big tech and Washington are on the same side now.  There [are already] could be civil liberties all but erased in the near future and fewer and fewer jobs available to middle class (i.e. there will still likely be tons of lower class jobs available, though not enough for the population as more and more middle class fall back into lower class rungs of society, and of course there will always be jobs for the elite...).

[CityLife]

^Amazon is also trying to get in the grocery delivery business. Already located in Seattle and LA.

http://fresh.amazon.com/welcome;jsessionid=745A03742BB50959CD6EDEC7A1881E00