In case you haven’t heard, Amazon pre-announced plans to Charlie Rose on 60 minutes to provide 30-minute local deliveries using small drones to take parcels right to your doorstep. Far-fetched? Of course. If Amazon delivery drones do become a practical reality the notion will take years to get off the ground (figuratively and literally). This highly rare foreshadowing of Amazon’s strategy has been met with both praise and skepticism in the media.
Writing in his blog, Om Malik (the “Om” in GigaOM) heaps praise on Jeff Bezos for taking the audacious leap. Malik has several speculations ranging from Bezos serving notice that Amazon will continue to be the unquestioned visionary in defining and re-inventing retailing, to taking a jab at Google and eBay.
There is also the WSJ article by FarHad Manjoo who, like Malik, thinks Bezos is a sharp cookie, but for entirely different reasons. To Majoo, Mr. Bezos was pumping up demand for Amazon Prime deliveries on Cyber Monday, and giving profit-starved shareholders something to make their eyes glaze over.
There are plenty of other views (see the tweets in Malik’s blog) about Bezos’ intent – some flattering, others not.
No matter what the opinion, one has to admire Jeff Bezos. It was only in 1994 that he quit his Wall Street job and drove to Washington armed with two notions: the internet would change everything, and a recent Supreme Court ruling that online retailers would not have to pay sales tax in states where they do not have a physical presence.
Amazon is not yet 20 years old. Yet it has moved from being a seller of online books to a retailer of everything for everybody using the most sophisticated retailing, distribution and pricing methods of any company.
Not bad for a guy who now has an estimated net worth of $25 billion.
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