Amazon Buys Kiva Systems

Here's something fascinating. Amazon buys Kiva Systems. As far as I can tell, Amazon are the first of the internet giants to take robotics seriously. (I know Microsoft has a robotics platform and Android did that hook up with Willow Garage last year, but those are minor experiments trying to figure out a market.)

What's significant :

- Amazon have a real use-case for this. They're a customer and will undoubtedly be improving the technology to suit themselves.

- Amazon have a history of transferring the technologies they perfect for in-house use to products aimed at third parties. (Z-shops, AWS, Mechanical Turk).

How soon before Amazon start offering integrated supply-chain management with completely automated warehouses to third parties as a turnkey solution?

The Empire Of Paper

Venkatesh Rao is good on the end of the empire of paper.

DropBox

It's a major disruption.

Once you begin using Dropbox, you become more and more indifferent to the hardware you are using, as well as the operating system on that device. Dropbox commoditizes your devices and their OS, by being your “state” system in the sky. Storing credentials and configurations of devices, and even applications are natural next steps for this company. And the further they take it, the less dependent any user becomes of the physical machine (HW and SW) that is accessing that data (and state). Imagine the number of companies, as well as the previous paradigms, this threatens.

But can it be swallowed by its platform host?

All Platforms Are Potential Markets

People still don't get it.

Every site / platform you own is a potential market.

Why doesn't Blogger have a template market built into the dashboard? Where I can click a button and fire-off a 99 Designs style competition for a unique template. Why can't I hire writers for my commercial blog venture? Or get matched with potential co-authors of a group blog?

Or find a PR agency? When blogs are essential for PR / marketing, why isn't a blogging platform also helping with that stuff?

Update :

Or, hey, Google knows how much money you make on AdSense? Can't they calculate your taxes for that and sell that number to your accountant?

(BTW : this thought triggered by Venkatesh Rao's post here)