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Google acquires BufferBox (YC S12)
- Tyrant505 14y agoGoogle is getting more "physical." Congrats guys.
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- IanDrake 14y ago>Eventually the company plans to charge $3 or $4 per package. Wow, not sure that was ever going to be feasible. Won't be an issue now that Google bought them. Good for them!
- sandipc 14y agoYes, especially since products like Amazon Locker are free
- abraham 14y agoIt makes sense for Amazon since they make money on all the packages. I would guess that purchases made through Google would likely be free at BufferBox.
- chris24 14y agoFWIW, they were charging $3/package for their initial launch at UWaterloo, and people were actually paying for it. You're right - probably not enough people for it to be feasible, but yeah, even some of us ('poor' students) were paying for it.
- Simucal 14y agoI would pay that in a heartbeat. Living in an apartment is a nightmare for receiving packages. I hate getting the missed package slip and then having to call and arrange for me to pick up the package at their facility 20 minutes away. I've had to wait 2 hours at the sorting facility for them to find my package before. So to me, $3 seems like a steal when faced with all that.
- dannyr 14y agoWhen I was working in SF, people take off half a day to receive a package. Let's say an engineer's hourly value is $100, even a $10 fee is nothing.
- BrandonM 14y agoOur apartment is awful for receiving packages... UPS and FedEx can't even get in the front gate. But I just get packages sent to work, so there's not a problem at all.
- viraj_shah 14y agoWell... that was quick. Great job!
- viraj_shah 14y agoI take this back. Quick relative to YC class but they've been working hard at this for 2.5 years. Great job guys. Super well done.
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- dudurocha 14y agoThis reminded me of Jessica Livingston's presentation. One of the monster were the big companies who would 'aquihire' you early on.
- debacle 14y agoIf you're a company like BufferBox, the best possible thing to happen to you would be to get acquired by another company, and Google is probably second or third best behind a company already in the logistics industry. Logistics is hard, and I don't say that about a lot of things.
- martythemaniak 14y agoThis doesn't sound like an aquihire where the product usually dies and the team disperses. Sounds like a regular acquisition - ie Google wants the team to continue working on their product but have it integrated with the rest of Google. Congrats on the team, to me it sounds like Google wants BB to become a major point of contact between Google and it's customers.
- revelation 14y agoThis is a german Packstation: http://images.computerwoche.de/images/computerwoche/bdb/1841866/890.jpg http://images.computerwoche.de/images/computerwoche/bdb/1841... Welcome to the future, America. I'd be happy to see what a startup under Google can do, but the competition isn't exactly asleep.
- drd 14y agoYes, DHL already did this. But, its market is huge and it will grow. Even, I would say still there is space for new arrivals in this field.
- eik3_de 14y agoDHL "Packstation" started 10 years ago here in Germany, now those boxes are everywhere in populated areas. I was somewhat surprised that it isn't popular in the US.
- akgerber 14y agoI see Amazon Lockers at parking garages near me while walking around in New York.
- frb 14y agoWith Germany being notorious for its copycats, it's funny to see this in reverse. Who would have thought that an idea that exists in Germany for almost 10 years would still be great for a startup in the US/Canada.
- trin_ 14y agoFunny that you would say that. There are a lot of us start ups (even yc ones!) that copy companyies/ideas that are proven and established here in Germany. The package stuff s just one example. All the ride sharing start ups that were hyped some time ago basically copy "mitfahrgelegenheit.de" ( now the company s known as carpooling) wh have been dong this for nearly ten years now. Public bike sharing is another example. It's easy to just blame rocket Internet and pretend like that's all of German innovation/startp scene. Packaging and bike sharing weren't even pioneered by startups but by huge formerly state owned companies who are Slow and boring n the Public eye
- tptacek 14y agoOne of the best possible outcomes: very cool new business idea, continues operating, backed by Google, with founders compensated for the risk they took launching it. Awesome news. Congratulations!
- niels 14y agoIt's not a new idea. We've had them running in my country (Denmark) for the last five years at least. They are everywhere.
- tptacek 14y agoOh! Sorry, I stand corrected. BOOO, BUFFERBOX. BURN IN HELL!!
- OoTheNigerian 14y agoI do not think your response is appropriate. He just pointed out what seems to be a fact that the idea is not new. Maybe you expected him/her to be excited about the exit but that not being the case does not mean you should have repled with 'rude sarcasm'. You could have used the opportunity you used to respond to learn about competitors in the space however you chose this route. I have noticed several senior (by karma) HN members that take an unecessary offensive approach towards comments that do not "tow the line".
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- jonathannorris 14y agoCongrats to the BufferBox team!
- ChuckMcM 14y agoI don't know about you but I want to see a buffer box setup where one of the lockers just says "I'm feeling Lucky" :-) Edit: and given a game of chance, and games in general. I wonder if anyone at Google has considered combining BufferBox with Ingress such that as you're playing the game if you 'win' a power up it is in the form of Google schwag in a locker, where the open code and which locker appears on your augmented reality glasses to claim your 'prize'.
- marcamillion 14y agoWow....never saw this one coming. This could be awesome. Congrats guys. Look forward to seeing what the future holds.
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- rocky1138 14y agoCongrats! We have a few of them here in the Communitech Hub in Kitchener/Waterloo. Our CEO swears by them :)
- salimmadjd 14y agoWhere were these services during the Cold War era? I could imagine endless movie scripts of sending secret packages of stolen material prototypes etc. via these services. I guess drug lords and assassins might still be able to use them :)
- tcgv 14y agoI was thinking the same thing while reading the post. Maybe a scene in the next 007 franchise film could boost their revenue ;)
- drd 14y agoThat is why starting a business is so difficult. You have to solve the problems. Remember Airbnb!
- jfoster 14y agoAren't they essentially just PO boxes for packages? In which case they probably did exist in that era.
- hencq 14y agoIn a lot of cold war spy novels they have stuff delivered to hotels all the time. I always wondered if that would work for non-spy parcels as well.
- salimmadjd 14y agoBut the implication is that you might be under further surveillance in your hotel room. However you can slip out at night and get your package. Instead of going to a "trusted house" or some old bookseller you go to one of these services.
- okstr 14y agoCongratulations to the whole bufferbox team. Waterloo ftw.
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- TootsMagoon 14y agoCongrats for sure. Now let's speculate on what Google will do with them? Are they going to get into online retail and compete with Amazon? Will Google be able collect data on what is stored in the compartments? Any other ideas?
- matthuggins 14y agoThis article didn't even tell me what BufferBox is.
- anuaitt 14y agowell you can always google :-)
- matthuggins 14y agoYes, and I did. But typically a well-written article will actually explain what they're talking about without assuming the reader knows all the background details.
- rdl 14y agoWow, congratulations. I'd love to get one of these (although bigger than the one in front of YC) once I have an office.
- alexsb92 14y agoIncredibly happy for Mike, Jay, Aditya and the rest of the BufferBox Team! It seems like it is getting better and better for Canadian, and in particular Kitchener-Waterloo areas. One of the other cool things is that I've had my desk at the Velocity Garage right next to theirs for the past month, and I only heard of the news this morning.
- rm999 14y agoI'm guessing this is related to what I just read in the new Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/21567361-google-apple-facebook-and-amazon-are-each-others-throats-all-sorts-ways-another-game http://www.economist.com/news/21567361-google-apple-facebook... >Google is experimenting with a service that would let folk find goods online, order them and have them delivered within a day for a modest fee. This seems similar to Amazon’s hugely successful “Prime” service, which costs $79 a year to join in America. Rather than try to replicate the e-commerce giant’s extensive network of warehouses, Google is looking for partnerships with shipping companies and retailers instead. I'm excited to see what Google can do. Amazon dominates e-commerce so well I'll often buy from them even if there are cheaper options elsewhere (because it's easier). Competition, as usual, will be good in this space.
- ejdyksen 14y agoAlso in this space (although not one day delivery) is ShopRunner, with a pretty impressive list of participating retailers: http://www.shoprunner.com/trial/free-shipping-best-stores.php http://www.shoprunner.com/trial/free-shipping-best-stores.ph...
- prostoalex 14y agoAmazon delivers to 7-11. And FedEx Store (what used to be Kinko's) is pitching their network to retailers as well, I picked up a bunch of Walmart.com there. Not sure it's going to be that big of a game changer.
- htf 14y agoSelf-driving cars + robot arm + bufferbox = extremely cheap, fully automated delivery service. Add a robotic distribution center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdd6sQ8Cbe0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdd6sQ8Cbe0 and you have an automated Amazon competitor. If, on top of that, Google turns your Google account into a bank account, you'll be able to buy literally with one click. Google's dominance in mobile with Android will ensure that everyone has a Google bank account through which you can make most of your purchases. If you're a manufacturer, Google will take care of all your advertising for free, just so long as you give them a tiny cut of each sale. Google will be a trillion dollars company.
- jhartmann 14y agoAs tongue in check as this post seems to me I actually think this is one possible way that things could go. I see massive disruption in the next 10 years in regards to the amounts of jobs that could easily become irrelevant once this sort of tech matures. It will be a very interesting space to watch. A Google + Uber partnership could be very kewl as well. We could get our goods, our transportation, internet and knowledge all from the an advertising company. Frightening and exciting at the same time. I think we live in very interesting times.
- alexsb92 14y agoBut at that point, would Google continue to be an advertising company? It would be like one of those megacorps that you see in movies, but hopefully not evil.
- consciousness 14y ago> .. Google .. but hopefully not evil. Too late, the hive mind which is $GOOG has already shown that it will do as it pleases; "hopefully" good [when convenient], otherwise whatever is profitable even if it is evil. Can't say I blame the $GOOG; this is an inherent problem with huge organizations -- the meta consciousness which emerges vastly undermines any altruistic desires of individuals. See also: $MS, $AAPL, $USGOV, et al.
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- 2arrs2ells 14y agoCongratulations, BufferBox! Can't wait to see what you guys are able to do with Google's resources behind you.
- fatbat 14y agoThought it was a great idea along with Amazon Lockers. Just did not know they would be acquired that quick! Any hints as to the financial terms of the acquisition?
- xhedley 14y agoThe UK equivalent is CollectPlus http://www.collectplus.co.uk/faqs#local_shop_section http://www.collectplus.co.uk/faqs#local_shop_section . Instead of picking up goods from a locker in a public area, you pick up your parcel from a convenience store. The convenience store use their Paypoint terminal to identify you and your item and get the item from their stockroom back of house. The advantage for the convenience store over lockers is they don't waste front of house space on items which can be held back of house. Paypoint provides a terminal network across 24000 UK stores to take cash for utility bills, BBC TV licences, cellphone topups and so on. Collect+ is offered by 5000 of these stores, it piggybacks on the existing network which is obviously way more efficient than building a brand new network with extra hardware. I suspect this convenience store network approach rather than lockers would apply even better to countries which do e-commerce as "cash on delivery", for example Russia.
- sskelton90 14y agoThere is also Amazon Locker in some places in the UK which is Amazon's equivalent. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200966210 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp...
- stevekemp 14y agoMy local corner-shop just replaced a two-meter stretch of birthday/christmas/congratulations cards with some of these Amazon lockers. First time I'd seen them, and apparently they get a lot of usage.
- cmaxwe 14y agoI shipped something with Bufferbox a few days ago and am waiting for my pickup notification. Hope Google doesn't steal my package... :-)
- relix 14y agoSlightly offtopic tangent: So by now we're all aware that these are already ubiquitous in Europe. The question I have is why it took so long to reach the US? Why didn't the main shipping companies there like FedEx and UPS step up and use their existing infrastructure to build something like this, much more easily than a startup could do.
- kip_ 14y agoCost of land rental/lease.
- stevoski 14y agoIt works well in high-density cities, and where a large proportion of the workforce pass through major train stations every day. In cities where people live mostly in suburbs, it is not quite so affordable to supply enough of these pack stations.
- citricsquid 14y agoIf we assume it's intentional I would guess the problem is the majority of US places are either too population dense or not dense enough. There's a finite amount of parcels that can be stored by these sort of systems; if the city is too dense (and too many people opt to use the system) it will become a gamble on if there's a place for your parcel there and the value of this system is you don't need to organise your day around deliveries. I suspect the reason BufferBox can work is because they're not a delivery company, so they have no obligation to try and fit it in to their current business model. Although then a pre-existing delivery company could have always gone with the BufferBox model... so, maybe it's just not that profitable in big places like the US?
- RandallBrown 14y agoAmazon has been doing this for a few years in the US. Bufferbox is actually only in Canada. It's not a service I need, and definitely not one I'd pay extra for. I live in an apartment. The apartment office signs for and stores my packages. If I lived in a house, in an area where people would steal the package left on my doorstep, then I might use something like this. It would have to be really convenient though.
- cllns 14y agoSo many Europeans surprised they do something better than America.
- rishi 14y agoCongrats! BufferBox has an awesome intro video.
- polskibus 14y agoeven the backward Poland had such boxes for at least several years now: http://inpost.pl http://inpost.pl. I'm really surprised Google picked them.
- alexakarpov 14y agoYay Waterloo! (swings his pink tie around)! this definitely suggests an attempt to threaten Amazon on their home turf.
- pajju 14y agoHow does this acquisition strategically fit in for Google?
- fudged71 14y agoShopping mostly, using their recent interests in Phones, Hardware, and being anti-Amazon. I think it's a broad new option for them. Plus, better to build out the general solution to this shipping problem than the specific Amazon-only solution; potential to be more useful in the long run. Better to buy this company than let it be bought by someone else.
- khangtoh 14y agoYet another acqui-hire.
- viraj_shah 14y agoI think it was probably a little bit of both. Smart guys but the announcement says that they'll continue to keep working on BufferBox. So I believe it's Google's attempt to compete with Amazon Lockers as well.
- luxxx 14y agoThis is going to make credit card fraud way easier. I whole-heartedly love this idea. There are ways to obtain things on the internet anonymously, there should be ways to do so in the real world as well. Fantastic.
- DigitalSea 14y agoNot a new idea as pointed out, but very cool nonetheless. Google is stepping up its rivalry with Amazon a few notches here, it'll be interesting to see what comes of Bufferbox now.
- brandnewlow 14y agoTerrific news! Congratulations to the team. When I heard you present at YC alumni day, the concept and quality of execution was clearly among the best. Not surprised by this at all!
- Evbn 14y agoTypical Google, investing in ways to provide customer service that has no human contact ever.
- tomkit 14y agoWho is liable for the security of the package at these stations? In a normal exchange, it is the merchant up until delivery to a residence/office (or signature). In this case, is the station operator liable for stolen/lost goods? For the German one it looks like it's operated by the delivery company (DHL), but in the case of third party operators, e.g. Buffer Box, I'm assuming Buffer Box is liable?
- sakopov 14y agoAnother enthusiastic "Oh wow, Google bought us! We're going to be doing so many new things now!" followed by "Sorry we're shutting down" in a few weeks. Happens every time. Isn't that what Google does? They buy a company. Half of the team leaves because they can't go through Google interview and the other half is disbanded to work on other Google projects.
- namank 14y agoThis is not a tech company. And so chances of shutting down are fairly slim unless it was the team Google was after.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoThe one thing I take from this is Google is very comfortable with software, and electronic hardware, but less so elsewhere. Buying in bufferbox will just be early stages of a "buffer region" of satellite companies all bridging the virtual pure world of the google core and daily life. Anything that currently has a key, is inefficiently owned and not shared, is fair game
- maked00 14y agoa) Huge risk that USPS grabs this idea and run with it b) Perfect MO for terrorists
- yason 14y agoHere's the Finnish equivalent: http://www.posti.fi/smartpost/english/receiving/ http://www.posti.fi/smartpost/english/receiving/ We've had these for about a year or two. The company behind this is the privatised Finnish postal service.
- uptown 14y agoHere's my guess - Google will offer a service where you can have some or all of your mail forwarded to a BufferBox. That mail will be scanned by Google - applying the technology they honed from scanning books, and possibly also the technology they purchased with re-captcha. So now you've got mail in digital form, which they'll make available to you online for review - with the option to have things you want handled in-person to either your actual mailbox, or to your buffer-box. The problem is - people have no experiencing with Google related to mail - so they may be reluctant to trust them to be part of this equation. So they start with packages - offering a service to help out with package delivery, and acclimating people to Google being part of the mail-delivery equation. When people are ready, they offer the scanning service.
- huggah 14y agoBesides the legal and regulatory hurdles Google would have to overcome to make this work, I don't think Google wants to be in the business of making an industry more efficient when that industry doesn't need to exist in the future at all. That is to say, why scan mail when you can just convince people to use email? Packages, on the other hand, will still need to be delivered for the foreseeable future.
- uptown 14y agoMail will certainly decrease, but I don't think its ever going away. And there's already companies that provide a similar service. Anyway, maybe I'm wrong - but it'll be interesting to see what they do with their acquisition.
- woggg 14y agoWho at Google is doing due diligence? I just searched for "Atlanta" in the locations page and got a 500.
- zio99 14y agoKudos to aditya, jay, mike and all who helped out at UWaterloo. Fun fact: They went through Velocity here first - never underestimate the power of tractions guys. Congrats!
- rpm4321 14y agoJust curious if anyone has heard about the acquisition price? Not sure if that sort of thing is verboten on HN for a YC co., so apologies if that's the case. Also, is this the new launch-to-acquisition record for YC?
- Mistone 14y agoIt's great to hear the company moves forward intact at google. That kind of google acquisition seems fairly unique. Well done BufferBox!!
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- littledot5566 14y agoIn Taiwan, every convenience store acts like a post office where you can pick up packages, even if they are on the same street. Because there are so many 7-11's, Family Mart's, etc., the system works extremely well. In Canada now, I think the only instance that is as wide-spread is gas stations. I could see Buffer Box stations at selected pumps in the near future.
- void-star 14y agocongrats to bufferbox, and kudos on an excellent slogan: "let us handle your package" <immature snicker>
- fakeer 14y agoIs it real acquisition this time by Google? Because there wasn't any press release link and very recently there was a rumour of a company being acquired by Google.
- mmaunder 14y agoI'd love some data on what the demand is for this. Don't most people have a fixed address that can receive packages? Can anyone share a typical need that a large demographic has? I'm sure I'm missing something, so enlighten me....
- omnisci 14y agoNYC, 8 million people. Many of them don't have doormen and no where to have their packages delivered. I pay for a mailbox which is somewhat close to my house and I'm lucky that they receive/hold packages for me (during a limited time). THis service is useful for those in large urban environments. Furthermore, anyone who doesn't want their packages stolen, damaged etc because they aren't home to receive delivery is also a large market. Yes, UPS does have an area where you can go pick up your package if it isn't delivered, but that is super annoying. I've had to do this many times and not only does their customer service suck, lines are fairly long, and the hours are very limited. It completely negated the point of ordering something online to avoid bad service, lines and store hours.
- itry 14y agoYou dont have to be at home when stuff arrives.
- bhouser 14y agoCongrats Mike, Jay, Aditya!