This is a german Packstation: http://images.computerwoche.de/images/computerwoche/bdb/1841...

Welcome to the future, America. I'd be happy to see what a startup under Google can do, but the competition isn't exactly asleep.

Self-driving cars + robot arm + bufferbox = extremely cheap, fully automated delivery service. Add a robotic distribution center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdd6sQ8Cbe0 and you have an automated Amazon competitor. If, on top of that, Google turns your Google account into a bank account, you'll be able to buy literally with one click. Google's dominance in mobile with Android will ensure that everyone has a Google bank account through which you can make most of your purchases. If you're a manufacturer, Google will take care of all your advertising for free, just so long as you give them a tiny cut of each sale. Google will be a trillion dollars company.

I don't know about you but I want to see a buffer box setup where one of the lockers just says "I'm feeling Lucky" :-)

Edit: and given a game of chance, and games in general. I wonder if anyone at Google has considered combining BufferBox with Ingress such that as you're playing the game if you 'win' a power up it is in the form of Google schwag in a locker, where the open code and which locker appears on your augmented reality glasses to claim your 'prize'.

One of the best possible outcomes: very cool new business idea, continues operating, backed by Google, with founders compensated for the risk they took launching it. Awesome news. Congratulations!

I'm guessing this is related to what I just read in the new Economist: http://www.economist.com/news/21567361-google-apple-facebook...

>Google is experimenting with a service that would let folk find goods online, order them and have them delivered within a day for a modest fee. This seems similar to Amazon’s hugely successful “Prime” service, which costs $79 a year to join in America. Rather than try to replicate the e-commerce giant’s extensive network of warehouses, Google is looking for partnerships with shipping companies and retailers instead.

I'm excited to see what Google can do. Amazon dominates e-commerce so well I'll often buy from them even if there are cheaper options elsewhere (because it's easier). Competition, as usual, will be good in this space.

Slightly offtopic tangent:

So by now we're all aware that these are already ubiquitous in Europe.

The question I have is why it took so long to reach the US? Why didn't the main shipping companies there like FedEx and UPS step up and use their existing infrastructure to build something like this, much more easily than a startup could do.

Another enthusiastic "Oh wow, Google bought us! We're going to be doing so many new things now!" followed by "Sorry we're shutting down" in a few weeks. Happens every time. Isn't that what Google does? They buy a company. Half of the team leaves because they can't go through Google interview and the other half is disbanded to work on other Google projects.

Incredibly happy for Mike, Jay, Aditya and the rest of the BufferBox Team! It seems like it is getting better and better for Canadian, and in particular Kitchener-Waterloo areas. One of the other cool things is that I've had my desk at the Velocity Garage right next to theirs for the past month, and I only heard of the news this morning.

The UK equivalent is CollectPlus http://www.collectplus.co.uk/faqs#local_shop_section . Instead of picking up goods from a locker in a public area, you pick up your parcel from a convenience store. The convenience store use their Paypoint terminal to identify you and your item and get the item from their stockroom back of house. The advantage for the convenience store over lockers is they don't waste front of house space on items which can be held back of house. Paypoint provides a terminal network across 24000 UK stores to take cash for utility bills, BBC TV licences, cellphone topups and so on. Collect+ is offered by 5000 of these stores, it piggybacks on the existing network which is obviously way more efficient than building a brand new network with extra hardware. I suspect this convenience store network approach rather than lockers would apply even better to countries which do e-commerce as "cash on delivery", for example Russia.

>Eventually the company plans to charge $3 or $4 per package.

Wow, not sure that was ever going to be feasible. Won't be an issue now that Google bought them. Good for them!

In Taiwan, every convenience store acts like a post office where you can pick up packages, even if they are on the same street. Because there are so many 7-11's, Family Mart's, etc., the system works extremely well.

In Canada now, I think the only instance that is as wide-spread is gas stations. I could see Buffer Box stations at selected pumps in the near future.

Here's my guess - Google will offer a service where you can have some or all of your mail forwarded to a BufferBox. That mail will be scanned by Google - applying the technology they honed from scanning books, and possibly also the technology they purchased with re-captcha. So now you've got mail in digital form, which they'll make available to you online for review - with the option to have things you want handled in-person to either your actual mailbox, or to your buffer-box.

The problem is - people have no experiencing with Google related to mail - so they may be reluctant to trust them to be part of this equation. So they start with packages - offering a service to help out with package delivery, and acclimating people to Google being part of the mail-delivery equation. When people are ready, they offer the scanning service.

Congratulations, BufferBox! Can't wait to see what you guys are able to do with Google's resources behind you.

I'd love some data on what the demand is for this. Don't most people have a fixed address that can receive packages? Can anyone share a typical need that a large demographic has? I'm sure I'm missing something, so enlighten me....

Congrats for sure. Now let's speculate on what Google will do with them? Are they going to get into online retail and compete with Amazon? Will Google be able collect data on what is stored in the compartments? Any other ideas?

even the backward Poland had such boxes for at least several years now: http://inpost.pl. I'm really surprised Google picked them.

How does this acquisition strategically fit in for Google?

Who is liable for the security of the package at these stations? In a normal exchange, it is the merchant up until delivery to a residence/office (or signature). In this case, is the station operator liable for stolen/lost goods? For the German one it looks like it's operated by the delivery company (DHL), but in the case of third party operators, e.g. Buffer Box, I'm assuming Buffer Box is liable?

I shipped something with Bufferbox a few days ago and am waiting for my pickup notification. Hope Google doesn't steal my package... :-)

Google is getting more "physical." Congrats guys.

This reminded me of Jessica Livingston's presentation. One of the monster were the big companies who would 'aquihire' you early on.

The one thing I take from this is Google is very comfortable with software, and electronic hardware, but less so elsewhere.

Buying in bufferbox will just be early stages of a "buffer region" of satellite companies all bridging the virtual pure world of the google core and daily life.

Anything that currently has a key, is inefficiently owned and not shared, is fair game

Yay Waterloo! (swings his pink tie around)!

this definitely suggests an attempt to threaten Amazon on their home turf.

Where were these services during the Cold War era? I could imagine endless movie scripts of sending secret packages of stolen material prototypes etc. via these services. I guess drug lords and assassins might still be able to use them :)

Here's the Finnish equivalent:

http://www.posti.fi/smartpost/english/receiving/

We've had these for about a year or two. The company behind this is the privatised Finnish postal service.

Right. What I should have emphasized is that the banking system will be provided entirely by Google. The credit card companies will be out of the equation.

Amazon has been doing this for a few years in the US.

Bufferbox is actually only in Canada.

It's not a service I need, and definitely not one I'd pay extra for. I live in an apartment. The apartment office signs for and stores my packages.

If I lived in a house, in an area where people would steal the package left on my doorstep, then I might use something like this. It would have to be really convenient though.

If we assume it's intentional I would guess the problem is the majority of US places are either too population dense or not dense enough. There's a finite amount of parcels that can be stored by these sort of systems; if the city is too dense (and too many people opt to use the system) it will become a gamble on if there's a place for your parcel there and the value of this system is you don't need to organise your day around deliveries.

I suspect the reason BufferBox can work is because they're not a delivery company, so they have no obligation to try and fit it in to their current business model. Although then a pre-existing delivery company could have always gone with the BufferBox model... so, maybe it's just not that profitable in big places like the US?

These services are in part an answer to relatively high labour cost for low/semi-skilled work, in particular outside normal working hours.

That is, in European countries with strong labour laws and unions, it's relatively expensive to pay people to deliver packages when most people are at home (early evening hours). The obvious answer is something like the Packstation, replacing labour cost with machines.

The US has a much wider market for very low income jobs because the marginal cost are lower, thus US companies can make money with jobs like people guarding parking lots, something you hardly see in Northern Europe (the weather might play a role, though...).

So naturally, such solutions spring up earlier where the relative win is higher. Plus as others mentioned the denser/more urban life style.

That's not a clear win by the way, lots of relatively decent jobs for low skilled workers are lost to these machines. The machines are cheap, but it might still have been more efficient to pay slightly less to the delivery workers (and kept them in jobs).

It works well in high-density cities, and where a large proportion of the workforce pass through major train stations every day.

In cities where people live mostly in suburbs, it is not quite so affordable to supply enough of these pack stations.

Cost of land rental/lease.