Amazon's Biggest Leap Was Boring

Bezos said in the 2013 interview that it would take four or five years to have those drone deliveries. It turns out that using remote-controlled aerial gizmos to drop stuff at our homes is incredibly difficult, prone to risk and potentially more trouble than it's worth. Like driverless cars, drone technology in populated areas is more complicated than most people expected, and it has been -- mostly for good reason -- tightly controlled in the United States by government agencies worried about drones straying into the path of airplanes, dropping out of the sky onto our heads or unwittingly spying through people's windows. It wasn't until this week that the F.A.A. gave Amazon permission to do drone deliveries. And drones might never be practical for deliveries when someone in a vehicle could do the same thing in a fraction of the time and cost. Drones are a great public relations jolt for Amazon, but let's not put too much stock in them for awhile -- maybe ever.