Probably true. The irony is that many other companies sprang up to actually build real drone delivery companies. There is one in Singapore (can't recall the name) that basically is trying to build drone landing ports (with lockers for storage) on each building in Singapore. The way it works is after you place your order, the drone is dispatched to the locker to make the delivery. The customer goes to the roof of the building where the locker is which then they use a code (sent by sms/e-mail) to open the locker. I thought it was a genius idea.

Edit: Looked it up. The company is called airbus with their skyways drone system. It is not related to the aerospace company of the same name.

As an engineer with Amazon, I can say with 100% (edit: 99.99%) certainty (without any insider knowledge on the drone program), that PR was not the primary driver of this. I would say you have it backwards. Amazon hired engineers to build it (and probably still are) THEN used it as a PR opportunity.

To say "The whole thing was always for PR purposes anyway" is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Amazon works internally.

More likely, somebody wanted to have fun with drones, then went about trying to sell it to amazon higher ups