The Google X teams, which has previously developed self-driving cars and Google Glass, is now tackling a new project: a drone delivery service. Currently dubbed Project Wing, the aircraft will drop the package from a height of several feet and slow it down through the use of a wire.
Over the past few months, Amazon and Google have been trying to revolutionize the delivery industry further. Amazon Air was revealed around December of last year, but has made little progress due to FAA regulations. The FAA is still trying to finalize all of the regulations regarding the flight of unmanned vehicles. Yet, Amazon expects these regulations to be finalized in 2015 at which point Amazon Air might become commercially available. This is in addition to their same-day delivery service which they already provide near some major cities.
It is interesting to see how this 30-minute delivery service will impact physical stores. If you can simply order via amazon and have a drone deliver the item to your house in such a short time, the need to drive to a store to get an item now lessens. To be completely honest, if I was given a choice of going out to a store to get something or having it be delivered to me in the same time frame, I’d probably choose to have the item be delivered to me.
Another interesting aspect of this article is how these web based companies which have started as a search engine or and online bookstore, in the cases of Google and Amazon respectively, are expanding to fill so many other roles. For example, Google is no longer just a search engine, it provides service such as internet, email, cloud storage and computation, android, and many other things. It’s hard to believe that Google was funded only 16 years ago.
Google's drone delivery service
FAA grounding Amazon Air
Drone delivery impact on retail stores
Amazon same-day delivery
Amazon Prime Air
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