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Amazon Prime Now launches, offers free two-hour delivery in Manhattan to compete with Google Express

Introducing Amazon Prime Now - YouTube 2014-12-18 11-02-11

Amazon has launched a new service called Prime Now which, as its title suggests, hopes to bring products from Amazon to your door faster than ever. The service currently offers “tens of thousands” of items spanning a wide variety of categories, is available now in parts of Manhattan for Amazon Prime members, and users have the option of going with either one or two hour delivery.

Getting your items within one hour of them being ordered costs $7.99, but two hour delivery–which allows you to select any two-hour period between 6 AM and midnight–is completely free (besides the cost of Prime, of course). To get started using the service, Amazon says you need to download the Prime Now app from the Play Store, log in with your existing Amazon Prime account, and simply add items to your cart with a quick tap. Worry not if you don’t live in Manhattan, as Amazon says the service is coming to other areas soon.

While Amazon has been experimenting with a service called Prime Pantry for quite some time now, this seems to be the company’s true answer to competitors like Instacart and Google Express. Since this service from Amazon incorporates your already-existing Prime membership, it’s able to undercut both of its competitors’ one hour delivery price. But one of the obvious downsides of Prime Now versus its competitors is that, if you don’t already have an Amazon Prime membership, you can’t take advantage of this super fast same-day delivery.

If you do live in Manhattan and have Amazon Prime, though, head over to the Play Store to get the app for free.

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Avatar for Stephen Hall Stephen Hall

Stephen is Growth Director at 9to5. If you want to get in touch, follow me on Twitter. Or, email at stephen (at) 9to5mac (dot) com, or an encrypted email at hallstephenj (at) protonmail (dot) com.