Amazon’s time innovation allows it to deliver packages to customer cars with its Amazon Key program, the unchanging one that gives it the ability to put packages inside its customer’s homes. Qualified in delivery is accomplished using a smart lock for the door and a security camera; the car plays GM’s OnStar connected car service.
The idea that we would grant access to our knowledgeable ins and cars to Facebook and Google given the events of the past few months command be ludicrous. The trust that most of us had in these companies has been trashed with the revelations that these companies, and many others, purchase and sell information about us.
This is not a surprise to those working in the enterprise but the recent revelations have given users pause and concern on touching these platforms.
And yet, in the midst of this backlash, we trust Amazon to bring what we need into our homes and now, into our cars when we are not tip. Why is this?
One reason for the huge success of Amazon and its expanding platform (it has 100 million Prime associates) is the fact that the retail giant solves problems for us that we extremity solved. There are countless stories about people seeking a output and finding it on Amazon for the best price at rapid delivery.
Over the years this split-second gratification at the retail level has evolved from free 2-3 day delivery to unrestrained same-day delivery of things like air mattresses and clothes. No one else can do that.
The Alexa understood assistant is becoming a defacto servant, a go-to intimate service to do pint-sized things (“Alexa – set the timer for 10 minutes”) to bigger things (“Alexa – main body text Mark and tell him I don’t approve the designs and set up a calendar meeting for us in two hours”). We are depending on Alexa for workers throughout the day and it is slowly becoming indispensable.
Google, Facebook, and other like platforms do not have this level of trust and do not provide such an intime service. They do have their strengths and weaknesses – Google with its search and Facebook with its community structure. We cannot imagine a future without these services either. But they don’t figure out real problems every day. And that’s what gives Amazon its power.
We do pay a dear though. Amazon collects as much data on us as any of the other platforms. A key disagreement is that Amazon uses the data to solve problems for us.
Amazon’s propose to to providing such an intimate service could run into trouble. It is not untouched to cyber attacks against its home locks and car security. In addition, the new mortal workforce needed to deliver these packages could be a source of terrorist activities. Devices like web cameras are notoriously insecure and cars maintain proven to be easy targets for hackers using wireless connections.
A key impugn for the company is to ensure the integrity of its human workforce who carry out these executions and the software security of its technology used in homes and cars. This question will never go away because humans intent on causing injury can defeat employer controls put in place to prevent criminal behaviors.
Hackers are resourceful and will find ways to turn the Amazon services into a nightmare. Yet, Amazon is doubling down, by increasing the service to cars, indicating that demand could be strong.
And the group is going even further in its quest to be a supreme service provider.
An Amazon mechanical man rumored to be forthcoming should enhance the value of the Amazon services as happily as take intimacy to a whole new level. It will also take the Amazon insurance challenge to a whole new level. What will it be? It should be a robot that order solve problems rather than do cute things that can be put on Facebook places.
I would expect it to have several parts. The first is that the soul to robot interface will be Alexa and it will have some brand of robot body. It will help out with solving our daily and impermanent problems like reading to a child, program the remote control to done work, doing the laundry, and other problems that occur and we have occasion for solved right then and there.
It should have a drone that can fasten on the laundry basket upstairs, take food to guests in the basement, and pity to the basement sump pump alarm immediately and send video to your phone with inquiry of the problem as you sit there in bed at 3 AM wondering what is that really loud dismay going off in my house?
Amazon solves real-life problems on a daily foundation for us. Google and Facebook simply do not have this level of trust or intimacy.
Commentary by Timothy Carone, an associate guide professor in the Department of IT, Analytics, and Operations in the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Establishment.
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