Did Ebay beat Amazon to the punch? The online auction house just launched same-day delivery for customers in the Bay
Area, and the idea of “convenience” with internet shopping may never be the same.
As first revealed by Techcrunch, Ebay is testing out “Ebay now” a new service where certain stores will deliver products to San Franciscans in as little as one hour, provided the store was open for at least half an hour by the time the order was placed. It’s a beta program, and Ebay is gauging interest to see whether or not to roll the program forward.
Amazon has also been rumored to be building warehouses near urban centers to launch its own same-day delivery, but Ebay may have just lit a fire under that project.
This effort aims to take the kind of instant gratification that we’ve become used to for digital goods – games, books, movies, news, porn, etc. – and apply that to real, physical objects. The implications for brick and mortar stores in major metropolitan areas are dire – why would anyone want to put on pants and step out into the bright light of day to buy things when they could just remain in their caves and acquire as many iPhone accessories as they want?
Ebay joins a few other extant delivery services aiming to get a piece of the ultimate internet impulse buys, but it has the resources to do it all on a much grander scale. It’s becoming clear that same-day delivery is the future of Internet retail, and it’s going to change the way we think about purchasing things online. For now, San Franciscans get to see how it all works.