Prediction: Amazon's 400 new bookstores intended to be bases for drone delivery

I find the big idea of brick and mortar bookstores as logistical bases for local delivery very much plausible. However, I think ground traversing drone delivery is much more likely.

It's a simple matter of weight - ratios ... A five-ounce bird could not hold a one pound coconut.

Longer run, it may also be a way for Amazon to locally broadcast in the radio spectrum with fewer dependencies on third parties in a way that recurses on it's strategy for controlling infrastructure expressed by AWS. High traffic retail space also could provide a base for selling services to nearby commercial interests.

In other words, Cringly's reading such a move by Amazon as primarily one into real-estate and driven by location is not as outrageous as the part about flying drones. Picking up your Amazon order at the local Amazon store or local third party delivery (or fourth party via Uber etc.), would decouple long distance hauling contracts from last mile contracts.