Netflix on Tuesday released a satirical video promising “Drone to Home” delivery of DVDs to customers, taking an obvious swipe at Amazon’s plan to deliver items to consumers via small octocopters, a.k.a. drones.
The Netflix video quickly bounded across the Internet, passed along on Twitter and Facebook.
Barely a minute long, the video purports to show a Netflix warehouse with cute little copters flying off carrying the distinctive red Netflix DVD envelopes. “Unlike other companies trying to rush unproven technology to market, we have literally spent days working out most of the bugs,” the narrator says, as one woman tries to run away from a drone following her, and another explodes in the background.
Even when the DVDs are delivered successfully, the delivery is a little too all-knowing – through the open sunroof of a car, to a person camping, even to a man standing at a urinal.
Netflix has lately had fun taking jabs at rivals, including HBO and now Amazon, whose Prime Instant Video streaming service is competing for viewers who watch TV and movies online. In Air Prime, the name for Amazon’s drone delivery plan, Netflix has an easy target — the idea is widely parodied online, with one popular version from the Taiwanese animators who make a living riffing on the news.
Close observers of the tech world took note of an ad in January for Amazon Prime, which includes free two-day shipping and video streaming, that referred indirectly to Netflix, saying, “Who needs to subscribe to another video service? You get video, great movies right there on-demand as part of Prime.”
The Amazon plan came to light on “60 Minutes” in a rare interview with the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, who took the reporter Charlie Rose to a secret room where the drones were being tested. In the interview, which promoted the speed and applicability of drones to do many of the deliveries Amazon makes, Mr. Bezos alluded to the need to get everything right. “Look, this thing can’t land on someone’s head while they are walking around — that’s not good.”