YOU, and many others, might not believe Amazon’s drone deliveries will ever happen. But this is a company who’s main aim is to make customers happy, something they’re often very good at The video revealing Amazon Prime Air to the world was short, but very slick.

In it, a package left one of Amazon’s state-of-the-art warehouses clutched by a flying robot, which soared above green fields and landed in the customer’s garden. Click the buy button, and the goods are in your hands just 30 minutes later.

That’s the plan, anyway. But critics piled in: it will never work, they said. Drones will crash, get stolen, get lost. No-one will want a sky thick with them.

All of those things are true, but if Amazon’s success over the last 20 years has taught the world anything, it’s that we should never underestimate Amazon.

Founder Jeff Bezos is a man with an unmatched ability to look ahead, and plan for the long term. He is ambitious and ruthless.

If you need proof, take a look around the carriage next time you board a train. Count how many Kindles you see.

The Kindle got rather similar treatment by critics when it was first launched. It was “clunky” and “bland” they said. But it sold out in hours, because people loved it.

Since then it has become the world’s best-selling ebook device, changing the habits of millions of readers. It still sells well today, despite the advent of the iPad and other “smarter” tablets. That’s the genius of Jeff Bezos: he gives people what they want. And one thing they want is super-fast delivery, which means one day maybe he will work out how to do it.

If flying drones don’t quite cut it, he’ll probably find another way.

But Google’s acquisition of the engineering company Boston Dynamics also suggests robots could become a part of life sooner than we think.