"Having shopped at the Amazon Go near my San Francisco office almost 200 times, I counted myself as a fan. Even back then, though, it felt like the company either didn't understand what it had created or had already lost interest. The piece I wrote when the San Francisco stores closed felt like an obituary, even though other locations remained in business."
"I said at the time that regardless of what happened to Amazon Go, I hoped startups would pursue the goal of freeing us from the drudgery of waiting in line to pay for stuff. One I mentioned in that piece, Grabango, folded the following year. Reportedly, the expense and complexity of equipping stores with its technology-which, like Go, involved a bevy of cameras using AI to keep track of shoppers and the products they'd plucked from shelves-played a part in its demise."
Amazon announced the shutdown of Amazon Go, its eight-year-old cashierless convenience-store chain, after prior rounds of closures in San Francisco, New York, Seattle and further reductions in 2024. The announcement coincided with news of 16,000 companywide layoffs. Frequent users noted convenience and initial enthusiasm, but operational complexity and perceived waning interest limited expansion. Startups pursuing cashierless checkout have struggled; Grabango folded reportedly due to expense and complexity of camera- and AI-heavy systems. Amazon continues to offer Just Walk Out technology to other retailers, maintains Dash Carts at some Whole Foods, and startups like Zippin and Mashgin still deploy variants of cashierless systems.
Read at Fast Company
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]