5 ms·

This is just an observation that doesn't contribute meaningfully to discussion, but ... Twenty years ago this web site would 100% have looked like an April Foo

This is just an observation that doesn't contribute meaningfully to discussion, but ... Twenty years ago this web site would 100% have looked like an April Fool's joke. Don't know what to make of that. Maybe it's that although retail feels almost exactly the same as it always has, under the hood lots of parts have really been moving, and I just haven't noticed? The parallel observation is that when Gmail was announced it totally did seem like a prank. You're offering how much storage for free? for everyone? How?.

pacala 7y ago
GMail solved a thorny problem: convince users to browse the web while logged in, preferably with their real life identity. To then collect and aggregate an extensive personalized dossier of their online activity without any fear of legal repercussions. This is priceless. Then just play the trends: how much space the median user actually uses, user adoption trends, planned storage capacity, storage cost. Possibly the whole GMail never used more than 1% of of Google's total storage capacity.
- CobrastanJorji 7y ago
  That may have been an upside, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the plan at the time. I don't think Google had the notion of "user accounts" before GMail was launched. I think the plan was more likely "serve ads via search engine results, but for email."
  - pacala 7y ago
    That's precisely the point. GMail gave Google user accounts, which made the cost largely immaterial. The 24/7 global corporate surveillance network has it's roots in Sun and its "The Network is the Computer", as early as 1984. Hard to believe Google just stumbled into a trillion dollar business model two decades later.
- laughinghan 7y ago
  I'm not saying Google isn't evil, but I don't buy this particular piece of conspiracy theory. Every major browser including Google Chrome is starting to phase out third-party cookies, which prevents exactly that kind of tracking.
  - avian 7y ago
    When you own the browser you don’t need cookies anymore.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    Just a couple of years ago, Google was one of the major tech companies who were strenuously defending the use of third-party cookies. They're shifting to eliminating them (someday) solely because they were forced to. The other major browsers were committed to doing it, and it became clear that this could pose a threat to the dominance of Chrome if Chrome didn't follow suit. But at the same time, Google (as well as the rest of the marketing industry) is working on replacing the functionality of third party cookies without having to use them -- thus negating the entire reason to restrict third party cookies.
  - GnomeErcy 7y ago
    Except that Google can essentially track individual Chrome installations and all the activity that happens on that, so blocking third party cookies doesn't necessarily mean that Google can't track you... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106
Crazyontap 7y ago
Yeah with all the innovation it indeed seems like we are living in a fairy tale. 20 years ago it would be impossible to think that you can order stuff from an unknown location/seller using a piece of glass. And soon we'll have drones coming to our house with packages.
- notJim 7y ago
  20 years ago was the year 2000. Amazon and eBay were founded in 1995. Also: imagine you could write what you want on a ground up dead tree, drop it in a special box and a few weeks later, the item shows up. That's a catalog, and Sears was making them in the late 1800s. I bet there are older examples.
  - wott 7y ago
    > imagine you could write what you want on a ground up dead tree, drop it in a special box And then, later, we could also order by phone and credit card, just giving our card number over the phone (since we didn't expect to be dealing with or be surrounded by assholes, like nowadays on the IoA) and getting the items after a few days (since the standard Post was better organised than the pitiful mess it has become now).
  - Izkata 7y ago
    > imagine you could write what you want on a ground up dead tree, drop it in a special box and a few weeks later, the item shows up. And suddenly I'm reminded of If all stories were written like science fiction stories https://web.archive.org/web/20040929041451/http://www.shrovetuesdayobserved.com:80/flight.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040929041451/http://www.shrove...
- hk__2 7y ago
  > 20 years ago it would be impossible to think that you can order stuff from an unknown location/seller using a piece of glass. FYI 20 years ago the total yearly e-commerce trade sales accounted for $27B in the US alone [1]. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/185283/total-and-e-commerce-us-retail-trade-sales-since-2000/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/185283/total-and-e-comme...
rio517 7y ago
LOL. At first, I thought you were trashing their website. ... "cause these days, tech giants put way more energy into their April's fools day jokes than Amazon put into this website." Also, that name, OMG, there are going to be so many protest signs that use this.
- pergadad 7y ago
  Well and try to Google "Amazon walkout" and all you find will be this site. Smart move! See also this https://www.wired.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-model-google-news https://www.wired.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-model-google-n...
awb 7y ago
And why is this a standalone site and not inside the Amazon.com portfolio? EDIT: JustWalkout.com was registered anonymously at GoDaddy 7 years ago: https://www.whois.com/whois/justwalkout.com https://www.whois.com/whois/justwalkout.com Amazon.com has public DNS contact info: https://www.whois.com/whois/amazon.com https://www.whois.com/whois/amazon.com There's no TM or R marks around the term "Just Walk Out" on the page and no Favicon. Are we sure this is real?
- notatoad 7y ago
  Huh, that actually looks kinda suspicious. Reuters has an article up [1] quoting an amazon VP about the launch, so it seems like the info is legit. But i don't see any link to this justwalkout.com from anywhere on amazon.com, justwalkout doesn't pull in any content hosted on amazon.com, the reuters article doesn't reference it, and all the other tech blogs talking about this seem to just be referencing the reuters article. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-store-technology/amazon-launches-business-selling-automated-checkout-to-retailers-idUSKBN20W0OD?il=0 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-store-technolo...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - spookthesunset 7y ago
    If it wasn't legit, amazon would have already released a statement denying it. You'd then be reading about it here...
- kylebarron 7y ago
  Well the SSL certificate was issued by Amazon.
  - banana_giraffe 7y ago
    As is pbs.org, or nasa.gov, or a bunch of other CloudFront websites that are only connected to Amazon because they use AWS.
microtherion 7y ago
> Twenty years ago this web site would 100% have looked like an April Fool's joke. Twenty years ago, "Just walk out" technology in grocery stores looked more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwjiO1MCVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwjiO1MCVs
castratikron 7y ago
While there will always be change in the world it certainly feels like the rate has been getting faster.
beloch 7y ago
IBM viewed this tech seriously enough to be marketing it to the public in 2006. It wasn't a "Hey, we're making this." ad but more of an, "We're cool because we're working on this, sorta maybe." ad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFhBGKU6HA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFhBGKU6HA 14 years later, it's still vaporware. There are a lot of fairly tough problems that need to be solved to make it work. Today, Amazon is probably better positioned to sucker/bully retailers into adopting their solution than IBM is. It remains to be seen if they can actually pull off the tech side of things though. IBM is not a company that's easy to laugh at.
- skierguy 7y ago
  I was with you until that last line. Maybe it's because I never saw IBM in its prime or because I only happen to hear about IBM when there's a ton of media spin on a product that never shows up as anything more than a gimmick (IBM has 5nm chips in 2017!!! Look at Watson!). I just don't find laughing at IBM to be that far-fetched of a concept.
- m463 7y ago
  AT&T You Will ad from 1993 on grocery shopping... https://youtu.be/AdDC-8179hw https://youtu.be/AdDC-8179hw
ashleyn 7y ago
Not sure if I would've viewed it as a prank. Maybe some ambitious plan involving physical RFID tags, that was doomed to fail.

pacala 7y ago

GMail solved a thorny problem: convince users to browse the web while logged in, preferably with their real life identity. To then collect and aggregate an extensive personalized dossier of their online activity without any fear of legal repercussions. This is priceless. Then just play the trends: how much space the median user actually uses, user adoption trends, planned storage capacity, storage cost. Possibly the whole GMail never used more than 1% of of Google's total storage capacity.

CobrastanJorji 7y ago
That may have been an upside, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the plan at the time. I don't think Google had the notion of "user accounts" before GMail was launched. I think the plan was more likely "serve ads via search engine results, but for email."
- pacala 7y ago
  That's precisely the point. GMail gave Google user accounts, which made the cost largely immaterial. The 24/7 global corporate surveillance network has it's roots in Sun and its "The Network is the Computer", as early as 1984. Hard to believe Google just stumbled into a trillion dollar business model two decades later.
laughinghan 7y ago
I'm not saying Google isn't evil, but I don't buy this particular piece of conspiracy theory. Every major browser including Google Chrome is starting to phase out third-party cookies, which prevents exactly that kind of tracking.
- avian 7y ago
  When you own the browser you don’t need cookies anymore.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  Just a couple of years ago, Google was one of the major tech companies who were strenuously defending the use of third-party cookies. They're shifting to eliminating them (someday) solely because they were forced to. The other major browsers were committed to doing it, and it became clear that this could pose a threat to the dominance of Chrome if Chrome didn't follow suit. But at the same time, Google (as well as the rest of the marketing industry) is working on replacing the functionality of third party cookies without having to use them -- thus negating the entire reason to restrict third party cookies.
- GnomeErcy 7y ago
  Except that Google can essentially track individual Chrome installations and all the activity that happens on that, so blocking third party cookies doesn't necessarily mean that Google can't track you... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106

Crazyontap 7y ago

Yeah with all the innovation it indeed seems like we are living in a fairy tale. 20 years ago it would be impossible to think that you can order stuff from an unknown location/seller using a piece of glass. And soon we'll have drones coming to our house with packages.

notJim 7y ago
20 years ago was the year 2000. Amazon and eBay were founded in 1995. Also: imagine you could write what you want on a ground up dead tree, drop it in a special box and a few weeks later, the item shows up. That's a catalog, and Sears was making them in the late 1800s. I bet there are older examples.
- wott 7y ago
  > imagine you could write what you want on a ground up dead tree, drop it in a special box And then, later, we could also order by phone and credit card, just giving our card number over the phone (since we didn't expect to be dealing with or be surrounded by assholes, like nowadays on the IoA) and getting the items after a few days (since the standard Post was better organised than the pitiful mess it has become now).
- Izkata 7y ago
  > imagine you could write what you want on a ground up dead tree, drop it in a special box and a few weeks later, the item shows up. And suddenly I'm reminded of If all stories were written like science fiction stories https://web.archive.org/web/20040929041451/http://www.shrovetuesdayobserved.com:80/flight.html https://web.archive.org/web/20040929041451/http://www.shrove...
hk__2 7y ago
> 20 years ago it would be impossible to think that you can order stuff from an unknown location/seller using a piece of glass. FYI 20 years ago the total yearly e-commerce trade sales accounted for $27B in the US alone [1]. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/185283/total-and-e-commerce-us-retail-trade-sales-since-2000/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/185283/total-and-e-comme...

rio517 7y ago

LOL. At first, I thought you were trashing their website. ... "cause these days, tech giants put way more energy into their April's fools day jokes than Amazon put into this website." Also, that name, OMG, there are going to be so many protest signs that use this.

pergadad 7y ago
Well and try to Google "Amazon walkout" and all you find will be this site. Smart move! See also this https://www.wired.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-model-google-news https://www.wired.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-model-google-n...

awb 7y ago

And why is this a standalone site and not inside the Amazon.com portfolio? EDIT: JustWalkout.com was registered anonymously at GoDaddy 7 years ago: https://www.whois.com/whois/justwalkout.com https://www.whois.com/whois/justwalkout.com Amazon.com has public DNS contact info: https://www.whois.com/whois/amazon.com https://www.whois.com/whois/amazon.com There's no TM or R marks around the term "Just Walk Out" on the page and no Favicon. Are we sure this is real?

notatoad 7y ago
Huh, that actually looks kinda suspicious. Reuters has an article up [1] quoting an amazon VP about the launch, so it seems like the info is legit. But i don't see any link to this justwalkout.com from anywhere on amazon.com, justwalkout doesn't pull in any content hosted on amazon.com, the reuters article doesn't reference it, and all the other tech blogs talking about this seem to just be referencing the reuters article. [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-store-technology/amazon-launches-business-selling-automated-checkout-to-retailers-idUSKBN20W0OD?il=0 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-store-technolo...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- spookthesunset 7y ago
  If it wasn't legit, amazon would have already released a statement denying it. You'd then be reading about it here...
kylebarron 7y ago
Well the SSL certificate was issued by Amazon.
- banana_giraffe 7y ago
  As is pbs.org, or nasa.gov, or a bunch of other CloudFront websites that are only connected to Amazon because they use AWS.

microtherion 7y ago

> Twenty years ago this web site would 100% have looked like an April Fool's joke. Twenty years ago, "Just walk out" technology in grocery stores looked more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwjiO1MCVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwjiO1MCVs

castratikron 7y ago

While there will always be change in the world it certainly feels like the rate has been getting faster.

beloch 7y ago

IBM viewed this tech seriously enough to be marketing it to the public in 2006. It wasn't a "Hey, we're making this." ad but more of an, "We're cool because we're working on this, sorta maybe." ad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFhBGKU6HA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFhBGKU6HA 14 years later, it's still vaporware. There are a lot of fairly tough problems that need to be solved to make it work. Today, Amazon is probably better positioned to sucker/bully retailers into adopting their solution than IBM is. It remains to be seen if they can actually pull off the tech side of things though. IBM is not a company that's easy to laugh at.

skierguy 7y ago
I was with you until that last line. Maybe it's because I never saw IBM in its prime or because I only happen to hear about IBM when there's a ton of media spin on a product that never shows up as anything more than a gimmick (IBM has 5nm chips in 2017!!! Look at Watson!). I just don't find laughing at IBM to be that far-fetched of a concept.
m463 7y ago
AT&T You Will ad from 1993 on grocery shopping... https://youtu.be/AdDC-8179hw https://youtu.be/AdDC-8179hw

ashleyn 7y ago

Not sure if I would've viewed it as a prank. Maybe some ambitious plan involving physical RFID tags, that was doomed to fail.