That's exactly it. And more: it stole the headlines in the exact weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. How clever is that? What's even more impressive

That's exactly it. And more: it stole the headlines in the exact weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. How clever is that? What's even more impressive: they hand-picked a story that is so good that even months after the pseudo-hoax went public, you still have hundreds (thousands?) of really smart folks on HN and other forums discussing the feasibility of the idea, the economics, or if an hex-copter wouldn't be better than a quad... And just think about the wave of CS students applying for a job at Amazon, "because I want to work on cool projects". Certainly more cost effective than driverless cars. Amazon Prime Air is already a success. They don't need to fly anything.