Drone Wars: Amazon’s First Strike

Last night on 60 Minutes, Jeff Bezos unveiled Amazon’s plans for 30-minute drone delivery.

I’m guessing my reaction of “woah…COOL!” wasn’t uncommon. It feels totally in sync with how I imagine ‘the future.’

After watching the segment, I asked myself the obvious question: Why announce now? Tech companies (and Amazon, surely) are notoriously secretive, so why this public relations splash? I have a theory:

Winning hearts and minds. The segment obviously succeeded in capturing the attention and imagination of the public. I awoke this morning to a ton of news coverage about Amazon Drones and last night my social media streams were flooded with techies and non who were astounded at how cool this was.

This was Amazon’s Opening Strike in the Drone Wars. Why Drone Wars?

• Delivery companies are surely not thrilled. This threatens to disintermediate them from a large chunk of business and drive down costs on the remaining.
• Delivery employees/unions will also see this as a big threat. Both unions and companies will likely lobby the FCC, FAA, public, etc to slow this down a ton.
• Government administrations have never been pioneers and typically need to be pulled into the future.

Bezos+Amazon needed to own the narrative here. They nailed it. It’s all awe and delight right now. Left unsaid for now are the implications of a future where there is a constant stream of drones flying over us. With the kerfuffle over NSA domestic warrantless spying, is this the natural next step in data collection? Is that a delivery Drone or an NSA drone made to look like an Amazon Drone? Is that drone following me…I feel like it’s been there all day? Dear Abby, I was changing this AM and then I saw a Drone out the window…could it have taken photos? Or at least, that’s what privacy advocates will ask.

Amazon succeeded in painting a picture of the technology that captured the imagination and covetous desires of consumers. That was crucial. If stories leaked out about Amazon’s drones and the meme spread among those who don’t want to see it come to pass (above), the public’s initial exposure could have been safety and privacy concerns instead.

The opening gambit in Amazon’s drone wars was last night. Amazon 1, their various enemies 0.

PS — Think it’s a happy coincidence that everyone is talking about Amazon on Cyber-Monday? Cue Jeff Bezos laughing maniacally in the background.