Amazon.com Inc. has built a convenience store that deploys a gaggle of technologies to allow shoppers to come in, grab items and walk out without going through a register. The 1,800-square-foot store in downtown Seattle, officially dubbed Amazon Go, is the latest foray in bricks-and-mortar retail by the e-commerce giant, which already has bookstores (including one in San Diego) and is working on drive-through grocery locations. It's a sign that Seattle-based Amazon sees a big opportunity in revolutionizing the traditions of Main Street commerce. In the much longer term, if the experiment works out and is adopted widely, it could radically transform the nature of work in the retail industry, much like self-driving car and truck technology threatens to upend transportation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a report this year that cashiers were the second-largest occupation, with 3.5 million employed in the U.S. The Amazon Go store is open to Amazon employees participating in a testing program.

Amazon has revealed plans for a shop where no checkout process is necessary. Customers will instead pay for the goods they have selected via an app. The Just Walk Out shopping experience uses the same types of technologies found in self-driving cars. The system detects when items are taken or returned to shelves and tracks them in a virtual shopping trolley. Once the shopper leaves the store, their Amazon account will be charged and receipt sent to them.

Amazon.com is still figuring out how to use robots to fill store shelves, but it's about done with clerks. Next year, the company will open a convenience store in Seattle where shoppers can walk in, take what they want -- and leave. The Amazon Go store is on the corner of 7th Avenue and Blanchard Street in Seattle, in the heart of Amazon's new campus development and a few blocks from the company's headquarters. Amazon wants people to walk in to the store and then just walk out with what they want. To figure out who to charge, and how much, Amazon will identify shoppers by scanning QR codes on their phones as they walk in, and use sensors and computer vision technology to determine which items they take.

Consumers'Couch Shopped' On Black Friday: Here Are The Likely Retail Winners And Losers Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos walks onstage for the launch of the new Amazon Fire Phone, in Seattle. Amazon.com has been tiptoeing into the world of brick-and-mortar retailing for some time now. There have been small outposts at colleges and a few beautifully designed bookstores have been popping up in cities with rumors for several hundred more. As I have said before regarding these efforts, they appear to be sleight of hand experiments designed to distract the retail world from the game changing concepts that are to come. Amazon Go is one such idea, one that could drastically change not just food retailing, but every segment of retail. The premise is simple and the video introduction that Amazon released Monday will surely be among the most watched futuristic retail videos around.

Amazon Go promises to allow shoppers to buy things without having to check out. On Monday, in the midst of what will likely be its largest holiday season in history, unveiled a video for Amazon Go, a supposedly new store that will allow customers to walk in, pick up items and leave without having to pay in a traditional check-out line. Around the holidays, Amazon becomes the king of positive publicity. In 2013, Bezos gave an interview to 60 Minutes in which he famously teased a drone program that would deliver packages to customers doorsteps. In 2014, there were a slew of stories around the online retailers rolling out of its Kiva robots into its warehouses.

The future of retail for marketers was supposed to be merry and bright: armed with their smartphones, consumers would walk into a store and pass a geofence, which would then alert the consumer of stores offering discounts and coupons for various products via their smartphone. The consumer would buy discounted product and then go home and be happy. Except, this is exactly how no one shops. This isn't to say that in-store shopping isn't already an online experience. It's just that the idea of locally offering deals to consumers based around a particular item or brand is very old school.

Amazon's YouTube video introducing its Amazon Go convenience store shows that the company has broken conventional supermarket wisdom and that its foray into food is one traditional retailers should fear -- for three reasons. The first reason is that Amazon knows how to communicate. "Just walk out" says it all! It's simple, straightforward and easy to understand for shoppers, and clearly underscores the benefits: no lines; no crabby cashiers; no swiping your credit card; no bagging. The grocery industry has a tendency to name and describe complex technologies in a way that confuses – Amazon's language breaks through all that.

Amazon Go is a new kind of store with no checkout required. We created the world's most advanced shopping technology so you never have to wait in line. With our Just Walk Out Shopping experience, simply use the Amazon Go app to enter the store, take the products you want, and go! How does Amazon Go work? Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning.

There is a point where we will blankly stare at our Amazon Alexa devices and wish that it wasn't so easy to order groceries and other retail goods. There has got to be some sort of alternative right? That alternative is Amazon Go, a new retail experience that proves that even Amazon knows that brick and mortar isn't dead yet. If you prefer not to stand in the middle of Walmart, softly crying to yourself at the muddled masses of humanity, but still like to physically go shopping then Amazon Go is the future you are waiting for. Amazon Go is a literal brick and mortar store, announced today.

Amazon is testing a grocery store in downtown Seattle that lets customers walk in, grab food from the shelves and walk out again, without ever having to stand in a checkout line. Customers tap their cell phones on a turnstile as they walk into the store, which logs them into the store's network and connects to their Amazon Prime account through an app. The service is called Amazon Go. It uses machine learning, sensors and artificial intelligence to track items customers pick up. These are then added to the virtual cart on their app.