This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Alphabet (GOOGL, Financials) is growing its plans for drone delivery. Its Wing unit will start offering services in the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the next few months.The move brings Wing back to one of its first testing grounds and shows that the company wants to grow its last-mile delivery network. The startup is marketing drones as a faster and better method to deliver basic household products and meals straight to homes, especially in crowded cities.Wing has already made more than 750,000 deliveries and serves over two million consumers in some regions of the United States. It works with Walmart to deliver groceries and other necessities, and with DoorDash to bring meals from restaurant franchises like Wendy’s and Panera in less than 30 minutes.The deployment in the Bay Area also comes after past attempts to combine aircraft and terrestrial logistics. Serve Robotics is testing a new way to make deliveries easier by using sidewalk robots and drones together.The expansion shows that Alphabet wants to transform experimental concepts into businesses that can grow. For example, Wing wants to extend beyond pilot markets and get more people to use drone-based logistics.
