Amazon Go will offer grab-and-go shopping with no lines or checkout
The Jeff Bezos playbook works something like this: sketch out a big, audacious goal in a fledgling market, launch with a modest yet fine-tuned project and build incrementally over many years until you’re the 500-lb. gorilla of a thriving industry.
This is playing out right now with Amazon’s cloud services. An experiment that began a decade ago to offer startups access to its tech infrastructure has turned into the dominant player in the cloud sector, with $13 billion in revenue. Amazon Web Services will have added 1,000 new features this year, including artificial intelligence technology like speech and image recognition.
Monday, Amazon made a modest announcement that looks straight out of the Bezos playbook: Amazon Go, “a new kind of store with no checkout required.” The company calls it “Just Walk Out” shopping. But it’s really an attempt to eradicate one of the more frustrating aspects of shopping in stores: the checkout line. It’s pure Bezos: start with 1,800 ft. of grocery retail space in downtown Seattle and see if you can remake retail all over again.
