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Amazon's much-heralded convenience store of the future, Amazon Go, may seem like a crazy experiment. But the company plans to open as many as six more of these storefronts this year, multiple people familiar with the company's plans have told Recode.
Some of the new high-tech stores are likely to open in Amazon's hometown of Seattle, where the first location is based, as well as Los Angeles, these people said. It's not clear if Amazon will open up Go stores in any other cities this year.
In Los Angeles, Amazon has held serious talks with billionaire developer Rick Caruso about bringing a Go store to The Grove, his 600,000-square-foot outdoor shopping Mecca, two of these people said.
And in Seattle, Amazon had identified at least three locations for additional Go stores as of last year, according to one source.
[...] News of the planned expansion of the Amazon Go concept is sure to set off fresh concerns about the great societal challenges that come with the type of automation that Amazon is inventing. Since the Amazon Go model does not involve customers checking out, there are no cashiers working in the stores.
Source: ReCode
Also Amazon reportedly plans to open more of its futuristic, cashierless stores this year
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @05:50PM
It's really not that hard to understand. If the cost of fraud is less than the cost of avoiding it, then the system is secure enough for its purpose. Some type of fraud will almost certainly happen and some fraudsters will get a bunch of free items at Amazon's expense. But it is reasonable to expect that the vast majority of purchases are not fraudulent because most people are not fraudsters.
Amazon takes most of the risk of fraud in exchange for the (assumed) benefit of having stores open today that are desirable for its customers to shop at. This is a business decision and time will tell whether or not it was a good one. As long as this bring enough non-fraudsters into the store, then it very well can be a net win.
But if you spend, say, 5 million dollars (including opportunity costs!) to prevent 1 million in fraud, then you lose.