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Comment by pflats | Hacker News Reader

I agree. I'm totally on board that there was some serious negotiation by Amazon (Prime) to get the piece on Amazon Prime Air to air the eve of "Cyber Monday" so you'd see as much Amazon Prime as possible.

I'd believe that it's intentionally out there to put quiet pressure on the FAA to lighten its regulations. I could even see it being run to distract from the Mother Jones-esque pieces about how terrible it is to be a seasonal employee at an Amazon Warehouse.

But this being a reaction to the Bezos book? That seems like a bit much.

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Its a total PR stunt, but you have to give Bezos credit for being WAAAY ahead of the curve (and the FAA, is now politically on the back-foot).

But it's not just the book (which by the way is getting excellent reviews from people other than Jeff Bezos' wife). It's about the worker strike in Germany and the other negative news about Amazon. They are following the Google playbook of creating goodwill and good PR through these types of "innovations" that are destined to remain as vaporware or never really considered by the company to be a real business for them to get into. Companies like Google and Amazon need it terribly because their businesses on their own aren't going to create the type of goodwill that releasing a product like the iPhone and iPad does for Apple.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-02/amazons-dron...

Positive book reviews have little to do with accuracy. The overwhelming majority of people that are reading the book have no way of knowing what the truth is.

The reviews I'm talking about aren't the reviews on the Amazon book listing but reviews that address the investigative quality of the book and its sourcing. Critical reviews, not reviews by the average Joe.

Fair enough. Could you perhaps link to some of the reviews that you found?

I have a friend who worked down the hall from Bezos for five years after Amazon was founded. If there is anything in that book that states or implies that Bezos in an insane power hungry tyrant, then it's spot-on accurate. That creepy forced laugh of his you can experience in the 60 minutes interview should give it away.

He told me: Your reaction to the laugh is healthy. You should be scared of this guy. He can't get enough power. When I answered an online quiz "11 reasons your boss may be a psychopath" (or something like that) i gave him 10 1/2 out of 11.

> They are following the Google playbook of creating goodwill and good PR through these types of "innovations" that are destined to remain as vaporware or never really considered by the company to be a real business for them to get into.

I'm sorry, what Google "innovations" are you referring to here?

Their Doucheglasses for example.

They're very much not vaporware. I was in the first wave, and they've given me 4 invites so far to give out. Meanwhile, they've been iterating rapidly on the software. Feels a lot like the gmail rollout did.

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