Amazon Patent Menagerie

When I wrote about the potential Amazon-Whole Foods merger last week, I may not have adequately (or at all) connected it to the nominal subject of this blog: The Internet of Things.  I'd like to take some time this week to correct that oversight.

First, let's all remember that 'Things' are physical and require a physical space in which to operate.  Amazon has had that through its distributions centers (DCs), but not in an publicly accessible space.  At best, they've had a few experiments with Amazon Go and physical bookstores in select metros.  With the Whole Foods thing, this changes.

In last week's post, I mentioned that these 450-ish stores give Amazon an opportunity to observe us shopping.  Not to sell IoT products to consumers, but to use them on us.  To see how we shop in physical spaces and then use that information to improve product placement, to optimize store layout, to optimize product choice.  To improve the shopping experience, not for the shoppers, but for Amazon.

And, on the heels of the merger announcement, we saw a patent that may be the kind of thing that will result from that learning.

My Frienemy: Showrooming

Amazon was awarded a patent for an Anti-Showrooming technology.  That's right, the company that most benefits from people doing price comparisons while shopping in stores now owns a patent that would prevent just that from happening.

The patent is about having tech in a store's public Wi-Fi setup that would either prevent people from using that network to price compare or offer deals that beat the on-line price.  Or simply log that the search has happened with as much collateral data as possible (location in store, MAC address, etc.).  Of course, this can easily be circumvented by not using the retailer's Wi-Fi and doing the search using your cellular data service.  Unless the retailer is using some cellular blocking tech on the outer skin of the store.

The real question is why Amazon filed for this patent in the first place.  TechCrunch posits that this may be a troll to prevent retailers from doing this: because they own the patent, they can sue retailers who try to implement similar schemes, thereby stopping it from happening.  This may have been the logic back when Amazon filed for the patent back in 2012.  However, now that they are going into brick-and-mortar in such a big way, they may be the only retailer who CAN implement this kind of anti-competitive behavior.

It should be mentioned that just because someone is awarded a patent does not mean that the implementation of the technology described therein is actually legal.  Should Amazon use this patent, can they be sued under the Sherman Act?  Maybe.  I'm not a lawyer, but it would not surprise me if they did.

Drone Base Prime

The other patent news from Amazon is an application for the design of mid-city drone hives.  Amazon has been noodling over the problems associated with drone delivery for a year or two now: noise, range and weight limits all being parts of that puzzle.  This one appears to be made less by Trolls and more by Dwarves (or maybe the Dunedain, builders of Orthanc, Minas Anor and Minas Ithil?).

To summarize the Drone Puzzle, even the most powerful drones of today's technology have limits to their range and payload.  Therefore it makes sense to have them stationed in the middle of things: downtowns and community centers and such.  Unfortunately, this is also the most expensive real estate, even if you are merely leasing and not owning that space.  It also means that noise complaints from the very customers being served by the drones are an issue.

With the Whole Foods acquisition, some of that may be solved.  The Whole Foods locations are already in the center of things.  In fact, based on their target demographic (younger, affluent or aspiring affluent, home owners), Whole Food stores are exactly where Amazon would want a drone hive.

Even with those 450 locations, Amazon will not be able to cover all of the US population.  But they may be able to cover a high percentage of those affluent folk, reduce shipping time to them and reduce shipping costs to themselves, the ultimate goal.

And, But So

All this means that Amazon will be using the Internet of Things, from IP cameras to drones to our own smartphones, to learn more about us and our habits, to offer key benefits for shopping with them.  To optimize the shopping experience for themselves.

I welcome the data in its general form, but am worried about the specifics as they are applied to myself.