Google's delivery drones to hit Europe next year

Google will test its drone delivery service in Finland next year, the company announced on Wednesday.

The program, known as Wing, will see drones deliver goods and packages of up to 1.5 kilograms in eight within a distance of up to 10 kilometers in Helsinki. Wing is launching a page now with a survey to know beforehand what could be the most demanded product to deliver by drone.

Google has already run trials with 55,000 journeys in Australia spaning a range of environments.

In an interview, TechCrunch CEO James Ryan Burgess said: “Today a recipient is charged a delivery fee, but so is the merchant. Our aim is to provide a service at a cost lower for both. We think single numbers of dollars will be the likely amount an order will cost when it is commercially live.”

The company chose Finland because it is “known as a country that is forward-looking, with smarter ways of doing things,” Burgess said.

The delivery drones are not the only tech project that Alphabet has launched recently. Waymo One, its self-driving taxi service, has already been rolled-out on the streets of Phoenix, Arizona.

The cars are available for a certain number of users in the metropolitan area of the city and although they are designed to be self-driving, in this first test, an assistant driver will be in the car just in case a problem comes up.