Amazon opens a cashier-less Go store to its employees

Amazon opened Amazon Go, a convenience store of about 1,800 square feet in Seattle, on 5 December 2016. Cameras, sensor fusion and deep learning tracked what shoppers took from the shelves and billed them through an app. Only Amazon employees could shop there.

Why it mattered Computer vision removed the checkout from a working store. Amazon said the store would open to the public in early 2017; it opened to the public on 22 January 2018.

Corrections

  • 2026-09-07 - This entry originally said the public opening “did not arrive until January 2018,” a fact neither cited source (both from December 2016) supports. Replaced with the sources’ own contemporaneous claim that Amazon planned a public opening in early 2017.

  • 2026-09-14 - The 2026-09-07 correction dropped the date of the public opening because the sources cited then, all from December 2016, predate it. The store did open to the public on 22 January 2018. That date is restored and now cites NPR’s report from the opening day.