The Same-Day War: Amazon, Google And Walmart Race To Bring Your Groceries

Having been a webvan customer (mentioned in the article) this race always amazes me. It seems like such a suicide mission.

The best part of services like this is that you can use it once every month-two to deliver all the large products. 20 large bottles of water, red bulls, watermelons, frozen stuff, soda drinks - all delivered to your doorstep (even if you live in the apartment they will bring it to you up the stairs). I am not really happy about buying regular food and fresh products from them, but for heavy/bulk products this is amazing.

It's hardly a race anymore. Home delivery of groceries has been around for about a decade now. Webvan may have been a spectacular failure, but they're hardly even worth mentioning. Many supermarkets offer it and Instacart has really perfected the art. It doesn't come without downsides, however. The price markup is one. The bigger downside, IMO, is the lack of variety. Instacart has pretty good variety and multiple stores to choose from, but it still doesn't even come close to visiting one supermarket. Hopefully someone will figure this problem out.

anyone else put off by the idea of having someone else inspect/pick out your fresh produce?

Groceries is pretty much the last one thing I buy in brick and mortar stores. Please don&#x27;t take this away from me. ;)<p>The article mentions, &quot;Forrester predicts 10% of U.S. sales will be via e-commerce by 2017&quot; -- I cannot believe it&#x27;s only 10%!

Living in (most part&#x27;s of) NYC it&#x27;s pretty easy to just walk a few blocks and be in a grocery store. I actually enjoy grocery shopping, it&#x27;s where I get ideas about what to cook or discover ingredients I&#x27;ve never used before.<p>This probably would be most useful in locations encompassing food deserts, but of course it looks like they&#x27;re largely targeting affluent neighborhoods.

Have there been any studies as to if this type of service increases or decreases the &quot;carbon footprint&quot; of the food. My gut instinct says it would increase it at least until there is a certain critical mass of orders in a geographical area.

I don&#x27;t know how they will make money but I don&#x27;t care. I love this.