There’s delivering packages on time and there’s just ridiculous. Amazon just got ridiculous.

Two days ago, Amazon gained a new patent for anticipatory shipping, a system that allows Amazon to send items to shipping hubs in areas where they believe the product in question will sell.

This will obviously cut down on shipping prices, but it will also allow the online vendor to edge ever closer to its real-world competitors.

But if you shop on Amazon, be careful where you hover your cursor. They plan to ship products they expect customers to buy pre-emptively, based on previous searches and purchases, wish lists – and how long the user’s cursor hovers over an item online.

They’re thinking of even going so far as to speculatively ship items to a physical address without actually having a full addressee.

This could well lead to miscalculated deliveries and unwanted items, but Amazon seems willing to go ahead with it anyway, stating in the patent, “Delivering the package to the given customer as a promotional gift may be used to build goodwill.”

Fair deuce.

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[Source : The Verge]