Is Amazon Prime Slowly Taking Over The World?
A few months ago there was a lot of buzz about Amazon testing delivery drones called Amazon Prime Air. They designed drones to deliver packages to you the same day you ordered them. Sarah Conner are you paying attention?
When you think of mega-corporations positioning themselves to take over the world like Skynet in the Terminator series, Google is probably the first company that comes to mind. But what about Amazon, and specifically what they are doing with Amazon Prime?
A few months ago there was a lot of buzz about Amazon testing delivery drones called Amazon Prime Air. They designed drones to deliver packages to you the same day you ordered them. Sarah Conner are you paying attention?
If the drones weren’t enough to put you on alert, this past week Amazon Prime dropped two more major bombshells. First Amazon signed a deal to become the exclusive streaming partner for HBO. HBO will have certain series only available for live streaming on Amazon Instant Video which comes free with Amazon Prime. It may not seem like a huge deal, but Amazon just cornered one of the premier content providers for TV shows. It may be early to say this, but this deal could be the beginning of the end for cable as we know it (and who can really be upset about that.)
One thing to note that was left out of the deal was Game Of Thrones. One can infer that HBO kept Game of Thrones away from Amazon Instant Video because of their record shattering DVD sales. The second bombshell Amazon Prime dropped this week was the advent of Prime Pantry. Prime Pantry is attempting to replace the trip to the grocery store. From the looks of it, with Prime Pantry you get one large box to fill up, and each item you add takes up a certain percentage of space within the pantry box. For as complex as it sounds, it is designed in a very simple way.
Amazon has had the automatic delivery of goods for a while now with their Subscribe and Save, but with Prime Pantry they have expanded their grocery line immensely. It is going to be interesting to see if Prime Pantry takes off. It seems convenient, cost effect, easy, and for the people who hate shopping, this almost insures you never have to step foot in the grocery store again (outside of fresh produce and meat, but who needs that anyways?).
Drones, TV, and now food? What else does Amazon Prime have in store for us? Although Prime Air is still in the initial phases and has some huge FCC hurdles to overcome, it is coming. If you ask the average person about Amazon Instant Video, they’ll have no clue what you are talking about, but are they slowly planning the demise of Netflix? Will Prime Pantry become a thing? If it does what happens to the grocery stores?
Of course this whole article was written tongue in cheek, but it is interesting to see the wide range and scope of Amazon, in particular Prime as a business. Personally I love Amazon Prime, but everything they are doing is slowly starting to make me wonder: is Amazon Prime going to take over the world? Do you have Amazon Prime? What do you think?