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The whole thing was always for PR purposes anyway. It's not a coincidence that it was announced on December 1st, right at the beginning of Christmas shopping se

The whole thing was always for PR purposes anyway. It's not a coincidence that it was announced on December 1st, right at the beginning of Christmas shopping season. I have no doubt they hired real engineers to build a real prototype. Maybe they even hoped it could turn out to be practical. But the primary motivation and the end game was always to get people talking about Amazon during the critical shopping period. (On a side note, the whole thing has a striking symbolic aspect to it. How does Santa Claus deliver Christmas goodies? He magically flies to your house and delivers them directly from the sky. And the drones do exactly the same thing.)

anonymous5133 8y ago
Probably true. The irony is that many other companies sprang up to actually build real drone delivery companies. There is one in Singapore (can't recall the name) that basically is trying to build drone landing ports (with lockers for storage) on each building in Singapore. The way it works is after you place your order, the drone is dispatched to the locker to make the delivery. The customer goes to the roof of the building where the locker is which then they use a code (sent by sms/e-mail) to open the locker. I thought it was a genius idea. Edit: Looked it up. The company is called airbus with their skyways drone system. It is not related to the aerospace company of the same name.
dbliss 8y ago
As an engineer with Amazon, I can say with 100% (edit: 99.99%) certainty (without any insider knowledge on the drone program), that PR was not the primary driver of this. I would say you have it backwards. Amazon hired engineers to build it (and probably still are) THEN used it as a PR opportunity. To say "The whole thing was always for PR purposes anyway" is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Amazon works internally.
- 8note 8y ago
  More likely, somebody wanted to have fun with drones, then went about trying to sell it to amazon higher ups

anonymous5133 8y ago

Probably true. The irony is that many other companies sprang up to actually build real drone delivery companies. There is one in Singapore (can't recall the name) that basically is trying to build drone landing ports (with lockers for storage) on each building in Singapore. The way it works is after you place your order, the drone is dispatched to the locker to make the delivery. The customer goes to the roof of the building where the locker is which then they use a code (sent by sms/e-mail) to open the locker. I thought it was a genius idea. Edit: Looked it up. The company is called airbus with their skyways drone system. It is not related to the aerospace company of the same name.

dbliss 8y ago

As an engineer with Amazon, I can say with 100% (edit: 99.99%) certainty (without any insider knowledge on the drone program), that PR was not the primary driver of this. I would say you have it backwards. Amazon hired engineers to build it (and probably still are) THEN used it as a PR opportunity. To say "The whole thing was always for PR purposes anyway" is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Amazon works internally.

8note 8y ago
More likely, somebody wanted to have fun with drones, then went about trying to sell it to amazon higher ups