And perhaps the most important moves made by each company so far have been centered in Massachusetts. Google acquired Waltham's Boston Dynamics - the maker of BigDog, Atlas and other walking robots - in late 2013, probably the most high-profile in a string of robotics acquisitions by Google. Amazon acquired warehouse robotics maker Kiva Systems of North Reading for $775m the year before.

But while Amazon had an obvious jump start on putting its acquired robotics technology to use, it's clear that the company has still done so at a much faster pace than Google has with Boston Dynamics.

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