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eBay CEO: Amazon Drones Are Fantasy
angry tapir writes "In the race to deliver online shopping purchases faster, drones don't impress eBay's CEO. 'We're not focusing on long-term fantasies, we're focusing on things we can do today,' John Donahue said in an interview. He was reacting to an interview Jeff Bezos, CEO of e-commerce rival Amazon, gave last weekend in which he said Amazon is investigating the use of drones for package delivery."
'We're not focusing on long-term fantasies, we're focusing on things we can do today,' -former Blockbuster CEO
I don't think I have seen *any* innovation or indication of long-term strategy from eBay. They seem to be basically the same as they were in 2000.
Is it just me or is it ironic that this article directly follows another article titled "Studies show people are biased against creative thinking"?
And what happens when an Amazon drone smacks into someone's face walking down the street? ,,,,,,, Everything on amazon goes up $1 in price, that's what. ;)
The drone-package-delivery story seems to be rather unrealistic to me, just for the liability reasons--considering the one guy who died after flying his own RC helicopter into his head.
More likely they would just hire local people to deliver stuff using their own cars for minimum wage (or not-much-more than minimum wage).
A quick analysis of the numbers and mechanisms shows it is not doable today. And it may remain massively uneconomic for the foreseeable future. It is a pipe-dream of people that desperately want to be modern, but have no clue about realities.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Isn't it a coincidence that it put Amazon on the news during the busiest shopping season of the year? Mission accomplished.
I saw my mother shopping on Amazon.com for the first time this weekend. I asked her about it (she always claimed to prefer brick-n-mortar). Her response was, "I was thinking this year I would give Amazon a try." Amazons marketing is working.
If I had mod points, I would mod you down for this creative thinking.
PayPal (originally X.com) was Ellen Musk (currently of Tesla and SpaceX). Before eBay bought them, they put up hundreds of straw auctions on ebay that only accepted PayPal payments.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
They used to be much more differentiated, but they're overlapping more and more. Traditionally eBay's business was regular people selling used stuff, while Amazon's was first-party sales by Amazon. But both of them now do a lot of business in the third category of being basically the storefront for third-party businesses selling stuff. Everything from camera shop like Adorama, to third-party bookstores, now list a ton of items through both eBay and Amazon Marketplace, which is where they compete most directly.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Columbus makes an interesting poster boy for creativity. He was, of course, wrong (In 1492, any educated person knew the world was round; the proofs of it are readily seen by anyone who looks. The point of disagreement was how large it was. Columbus thought it was smaller than the general opinion, which made the Indies a reachable distance away sailing west. However, he was wrong; the generally accepted figure of the size of the world was correct (and surprisingly accurate)). But because his wrong idea drove him to try something new, he opened up something even bigger than he had envisioned.
Translation: Damn! Why didn't I think of this awesome ploy for free publicity during a critical selling season first?
All arguments about whether drones for package delivery are viable or not aside, I am honestly baffled that eBay's CEO would open his mouth on this one...
Even if it's 100%-aw-hell-no-never-going-to-happen, Amazon's work so far has likely been fairly inexpensive and has certainly stirred up as much attention as a decent sized ad campaign (the sort of thing that might actually cost as much or more to produce and buy airtime to run), so it isn't as though they are wallowing in shame and loss right now.
Under those circumstances, what possible benefit is there to a not-terribly-clever rubbishing of the opposition that just makes you look unhip and non-innovative? Especially when that is basically true; direct connection of buyers and sellers worldwide, in an easy-to-use, comparatively safe, framework may have been pretty cool when ebay hit the scene, but they hit the scene quite some time ago and have mostly been ratcheting up the transaction costs since then.
I personally have strong doubts about the viability of drone delivery; but that made me interpret the Amazon stuff as a lighthearted ad piece, done as relatively cheap PR; but probably emerging from a broader 'theorizing about new stuff to sell and new ways to sell it' project that usually operates more quietly, and probably also has more mundane, but practical, notions on the burner. A "Bah, here at Ebay we only do incremental modifications based on short-term considerations, sonny!" response is... tone deaf... to say the least.
Given that they annihilated, er, acquired PayPal, a payment provider that technically has about as much to do with their core business as shipping does, I really see only two possible explanations:
1. eBay once again is clueless,
2. eBay knows full well what's coming and doesn't want to spill the beans early.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I agree that a lot of work remains to be done, much of it legal or regulatory: on what basis will a license to operate be granted, will fixed flight paths or exclusion zones have to be established, what are the safety criteria, etc. But none of this is a showstopper to start a service like this in the near future, which was my point.
The technical part is less scary, there are already drones with some redundancy which are able to fly with 1 or 2 motors out. Some are capable of some extreme autonomous acrobatics; these are certainly able to handle an unexpected gust of wind. Some sites will be harder to land on than others; I imagine you sign up for this premium service, then Amazon checks your house on Google maps (or they simply send a drone to survey your yard) and they let you know if you're eligible. You could even pick the landing site, in a closed off back yard for example (but not in the pool please!).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Even if Amazon is just pretending to be relevant in this regard at least they can claim a successful business model. I used to use eBay religiously (even for new goods) until I got Amazon Prime and realized that the subscription fee and price premium for new goods was well worth the lack of hassle with slow shipping, bad listings, and PayPal's godawful dispute resolution. Whenever I think of eBay I think of the Clinton administration.
...that the emperor has no clothes? And that the whole drone thing is just holiday publicity stunt? Not Amazon, surely. /sarcasm
are going to throw a party all over this country. once drones are the accepted process, anyone with a radio and a look alike amazombie will be able to deposit malicious packages just about anywhere, fly it into a river, and be out of there before something blows up. I will feel slightly better receiving a package that i know was at least exposed to one other person before me.
Are you nuts? I like neither eBay nor PayPal, but you're delusional if you think PayPal doesn't provide a valuable and reasonably easy-to-use service. You're similarly delusional if you think that there were any alternatives that provide similar feature set - or did at the time they were still separate entities. I've been buying and selling every once in a while on eBay for more than a decade, and at no point there was any serious alternative to PayPal.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Bummer, I was hoping for the steady stream of free drone parts...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Was NOT to propose a "Drone Delivery Service" -
Instead it is a PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATION.
- 1 Normalize and socialize the idea of drones as a common, novel feature of US civilian airspace. Contextualize debate on practical advantage over risks and intrusion.
- 2 Position Amazon as a fixture in people's discourse and attention. First, during an expected competitive and difficult shopping season and ultimately for long-term.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."