Are Amazon's delivery drones just a cheap PR stunt?

Amazon won Cyber Monday with Jeff Bezos' sensational reveal that Amazon was planning to get customers their goods in 30 minutes or less — by drone.According to Bezos, who made the announcement on the CBS “60 Minutes” TV programme, the initiative would be called Prime Air. Bezos said the drones could carry packages that weigh up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms), which covers about 86 percent of the items Amazon delivers. The current generation of drones the company is testing has a range of about 10 miles (16 kilometers), which Bezos noted could cover a significant portion of the population in urban areas.And as expected, the announcement broke the Internet.Although Bezos said that we weren't likely to see the new drones for a good five years, the collective imagination of the Internet went crazy. It generated tweets like this:

The delivery drone is late. #firstworldproblems — First World Problems (@firstworldme) December 3, 2013

 

Amazon drones will have the best missed delivery slips http://t.co/avD0NBBvcn pic.twitter.com/I91pNSJc7l — HuffPostComedy (@HuffPostComedy) December 2, 2013

 And articles like this.[caption id="attachment_1263805" align="alignleft" width="380"] AP[/caption]But after the web stopped hyperventilating, reality started seeping in. Drones sound cool and all that, but they're still far away. Science fiction far away. According to Reuters:"There are many challenges to overcome," said the IET's Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal, who is pushing for wider use of unmanned aircraft worldwide. "Top of the list is the need to mature the technologies and demonstrate to the regulators that unmanned aircraft can operate safely in our airspace."Other concerns on safety and privacy also mean that it is likely that drone deliveries are still far far away.Mark Udall, a Democrat Colorado senator who is pushing legislation that would outlaw domestic surveillance by UAS, raised concerns about privacy."Coloradans will accept this technology only if they are certain their privacy is protected and that Americans won't be victims of surveillance or privacy abuse by private unmanned aerial system operators," he said in a statement.So why would Amazon do that to us? Why raise our hopes, only to tell us that this is years and years away?According to Dan Lyons of 'Hubspot', it's the publicity, stupid. He says:For one thing, today is Cyber Monday, the day when everyone goes shopping online. Amazon somehow got CBS and 60 Minutes to create a 14-minute free ad spot for Amazon on the eve of this huge shopping day. But this is not the only reason, according to Lyons. He states that the 'cool' reveal by Bezos is also an attempt to offset the damage to his image caused by Businessweek reporter Brad Stone in his book, The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon,  which according to Gawker, portrays Bezos as a ruthless tyrant and a "penny-pinching ballbuster".Om Malik of GigaOm is not as sceptical as Lyons, but also asks why Bezos, who is as secretive as the good folks over at Apple, has made a reveal this momentous, years ahead of when it could be implemented.He lists five takeaways from the video including, "It is also a pretty broad swipe at all local retail, especially big box retailers such as Walmart, Kmart and Target. Those other guys are fighting to get their services web and mobile ready, while Amazon is fine-tuning what matters most in digital commerce: supply chain and speed of delivery. Amazon is optimizing its supply chain to go from beyond delivery on the same day to within a few hours, with ultimate ambition of being less than an hour"and "It is thumbing Google and eBay in the face, saying, go ahead, experiment all you want with same day delivery. Retail is Amazon’s core business and it is doing whatever it takes to get even more efficient at it."Why Bezos made the reveal, only he will know. In the meantime we have been left with this cool new idea of delivery drones and a feeling of being slightly let down.