Nobody really has Amazon's physical goods delivery infrastructure. You can look at Wal-Mart and Target, but they have infrastructure designed to solve a very different problem, getting large amounts of the same goods to certain physical stores. They rely on semi-truck drivers to deliver palettes of goods to stores. What they don't have, for example, is Amazon's very close relationships to UPS and USPS. Could they develop it? Maybe. At great expense. Would they be able to peel off more existing Amazon customers than they'd be cannibalizing their own current sales? Who knows.

This does not compute. They already have ship-to-store, and have had for quite a while. It hasn't made a significant impact on their online power. Customers don't want to drive to a Walmart to pickup their online order. That's an extra step for no reason.

I actually use the Home Depot site-to-store equivalent much more than the Wal-Mart one [probably several times a month, vs. once or twice a year]. Home Depot gets it right. There are still occasional problems, and it would be better if they could fulfill the orders faster, but it still avoids having to search for stuff, which I consider to be of significant value.

For driving it really depends on the city and the persons situation. Many people drive by a walmart on their commute, the ability to order something in the morning then pick it up on the way home would be convenient. For businesses someone could order something the night before and pick it up in the morning and use it at work that day, that would be very valuable.

Plus, Amazon lockers.

http://www.walmart.com/cp/Site-to-Store/538452

Walmart Online to dominate Amazon? Walmart has been trying hard in the online space for ages! What indicates they aren't trying hard? I'm sure they're trying as hard as possible. A major problem for Walmart is engineering talent. Top engineers don't want to work for Walmart. The brand has negative value for an engineer. Innovation and the ability to leap frog will be hindered by this brand problem.

And as far as "pick out items online and have them boxed at the customer service desk". Yes, it does sound reasonable - in fact they've been doing this almost since day one (Site-to-store). It's obvious and it doesn't solve any real problem. I don't want to have to get in my car, deal with traffic, park in a huge parking lot, wade through crowds and Walmart, wait for a disinterested customer service rep to find my online order (let's hope they didn't forget anything), ring me up, then haul everything back to my car, drive home, etc.

I want to click a button for what I want, then open my door that same day and see my items sitting there waiting for me. That is human progress and innovation that Walmart isn't going to be able to match.

http://www.walmart.com/search/search-ng.do?search_query=ensu...

http://www.walmart.com/search/search-ng.do?search_query=cent...

If it is then I can't figure out how to use it. Those were just the two items I would like to purchase and typed in first.

Regarding the "click a button for what I want, then open my door that same day and see my items sitting there waiting for me", that's not true for many places. I live in a tech-focused capital city and shipping is at least 2 days for Prime but I've had it take much longer (yes, for items sold by Amazon). I regularly see Amazon do the "our shipping carrier handed your item to USPS and we are no longer responsible for how long it takes" routine and it is completely unacceptable.

Once they get the site-to-store thing right (in it's current state you are correct, it has flaws) then they should offer some kind of large promotion to encourage people to register and use their service one time. Right now I'm hesitant to register and start shopping with Walmart, I don't have a logical reason for this though.

Real innovation will be when I can order and pay online, then send out my autonomous vehicle to walmart, then one of their employees will put the items in my car and the car will drive home and text or email me when it arrives. That's probably 10 years away but it will happen.

For the last point - why send out your autonomous vehicle and deal with employees at all? That's so 2024 (as you said). I want an autonomous Amazon Fresh truck, or maybe even an Amazon Prime drone to deliver to me. No employees needed, no human inefficiency.

Several reasons. It would work with any store or even fast-food/restaurants, sending my car to pick up a burger would be fantastic. Human employees walking the packages to your car (which would have a special lane in front of the store) could be easily replaced by a robot, at the moment it's just cheaper to have a human do the task. For many people who need a low paying and low skill job, that would be a great opportunity for them, there wouldn't be any dealing with customers either.

How would the autonomous delivery trucks you are talking about actually deliver the packages? The very difficult part would be getting the packages from the vehicle to the person's door. It would not work if it required the customers to come outside to pick up the packages, people wouldn't be home, they might be busy at the moment, it would be difficult to ensure they don't take the wrong or someone elses packages. I've considered that before and I just can't figure out a way for that to work.

The drones are also impractical and could only be used for small items. You would basically need a landing zone in your yard, I just don't see that happening nor being part of the free shipping. In my opinion the drone announcement was just a research project (that was full of flaws that can't be overcome) or a marketing stunt.

Tightly specified mailboxes.

Imagine that if you installed a special "UP-EX" mail box, you could receive packages securely when not at home. The truck has an arm that places the item directly into the receptacle.

For the first iteration, I'd have a human take the boxes from the truck to the door. The truck would have one of those laser designators like Kiva uses for amazon warehouses to help the human pick the box. The difference is that the human is a minimum wage drone instead of a unionized teamster, so the savings could be quite substantial.

Plus, since the truck is automated, it doesn't have to be static while the picker is out running with the package.

I love to order my groceries to be delivered, it's very convenient. But I generally fail to order them significantly far enough (24 hours!) in advance, and end up going to the supermarket anyway. I would love same-day delivery. Don't ask me the reason, because I don't know it!

I seriously doubt there is any personal retaliation going on.

I don't think they should split the business, as one of the things that makes AWS good is that it has to keep Amazon running. The initial concept of AWS as something that Amazon can use to meet demand peaks, while selling excess capacity makes a lot of sense.

This has the option for a single product from Amazon, or a "2 pack" for a $100 surcharge from some random supplier. This is on MOST products from Amazon and a real pain in the ass to avoid. I hate that Amazon allows this crap which is basically spam. I would be willing to bet that the supplier simply orders 2 of these products from Amazon after the purchase, then ships them out to you and makes $100. It offers zero benefit to Amazon's customers, but it's a rampant issue.

There's also the companies with names such as "Prime inc." which are just trying to trick people.

They probably make the most money off of assistants or employees who are asked to purchase a product and don't really look at the prices or shipping.

Imagine this scenario: I send the link above to one of my family members saying this is the product they need for their doors. They see 2-pack and immediately click it and continue through the checkout process, because I had told them this was the best value product and I had done the research for them.

A query parameter such as (?only_show_amazon=true) would help the issue, or better yet would be a permanent setting, but Amazon doesn't see the problem with allowing these sellers or products. Maybe utilizing the Amazon API and creating a website to avoid this would be a solution.

My only complaint is when they ship by FedEx. In my town FedEx hands packages off to the Post Office, where two day delivery becomes three or four.

Amazon as a retail store has been consistently great for me in all major aspects. Any issues I've had with orders have been promptly resolved and Amazon has gone to bat for me several times. I agree that Wal-mart or another major department store could give Amazon a run for its money if they played their cards right, but like you, I don't think they're in that headspace.

Internet infrastructure is pretty important, so it's a little more disconcerting to me if some huge percentage of sites are dependent on the same single ISP/datacenter/etc.

sendgrid is like 5 years old: http://sendgrid.com/

mailchimp's version: http://mandrill.com/

rackspace: http://www.mailgun.com/

also: https://postmarkapp.com/

SES is still the cheapest (especially when scaling up) and extremely fast from my experience with it.

Here is a good article I found about SES and competitors such as Mandrill: http://www.ventureharbour.com/transactional-email-service-be...

(First used MailChimp in 2003 and they've always been the bomb.)

The Mandrill service is nice, I agree.

Also, MailChimp has a very cool 404 page: http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/transactional-reports-overvi...

But the fact that amazon has tried some lockers but it doesn't seem the common way to buy stuff, and there's no huge scaling effort from amazon, seems to indicate that people prefer to recieve packages at home.

And bezos understands that in this game, if you want to make profits, you need for customers to love using your services.Having that ability at low enough costs could earn you a monopoly. And than might be the time to play with "amazon lockers" and other cost cutting measures.

What is the benefit of using an Amazon Locker rather than shipping to your home? Maybe in neighborhoods that have a high stealing packages percentage.

The term lockers also imply (incorrectly) that they are supposed to be purchased by people for packages to be shipped to (like a PO box), the name might be hurting their success.

I can't find anywhere on any of the Amazon Locker pages where it lists a single benefit of using the lockers, http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=6442600011&ref=locker_fd_brws

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-no-rush-delivery-2012-...

From my experience the difference is that they delay shipping your item. They claim to have one of the best shipping and handling systems in the world but for some reason they save money by delaying boxing an order for a week, it doesn't really make sense to me. I think they're really just trying to get people to purchase Prime.

By choosing 2-day, you're forcing Amazon to pick and pack that order today probably, tomorrow at the very latest.

By choosing "no rush", you allow them flexibility to fulfill from a wide variety of centers, on a wide variety of days. Maybe there's a weekly cycle in order volume and no rush orders may allow them to even that out with a more constant labor force.

But I like the Amazon store quite much, don't know any other company that offers a similar service (in Europe/Germany).