A long time ago, I was a dev in Amazon's fulfillment org, and one day a lot of very smart people disappeared. The guy who had done some incredible pioneering work in computer vision for the warehouses; the only principal engineer the org had at the time; and a bunch of other people I know that we're just really clever people. And they joined an org called "JIHM". What's JIHM? They'll only tell you if you join. But it's going to be really cool. (I was in Toronto so I couldn't join- Seattle only).

What I knew: these particular people had left for this project. The head of it was the guy who had lead the Kindle project- he had rejoined Amazon allegedly because Jeff asked him to lead this project. And for whatever reason, this JIHM org had all these new physical book store managers reporting up to them.

Over lunch one day, I proposed a theory to my coworker: "they're going to make that IBM commercial from the 90s, where the sketchy dude grabs a bunch of stuff and puts it in his pockets, then just walks out the door and gets a receipt". It was a fun idea, and given the CV people they had pulled it may have even made sense. "What about the book stores?" My friend asked "It's a smoke screen. That same guy leading JIHM is legendary for leaking false reports that Amazon was going to build a PC to cover him hiring hardware engineer for the Kindle."

6 months later, Amazon Go with it's 'Just Walk Out' technology was publicly announced. The CV guy I knew was even in the commercial ("Holy shit, is that Danny?!").

Maybe this is the final conclusion that those stores were just a cover.

(Caveat: this is all wild speculation, rumours, and probably bad memory on my part, but it's a great story and I swear it's all true!)