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Retail giant Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer, dropping off a Fire TV device and a bag of popcorn to a house in the English countryside 13 minutes after receiving an online order.

U.S. aviation regulators approved commercial drone applications so quickly in recent years that they missed safety violations and took few enforcement actions, a government watchdog report concluded.

From Amazon.com Inc. to Domino’s Pizza, technology giants and retailers have dreamed of drone deliveries for years. One Chinese e-commerce giant intends to make it a full-fledged reality by 2017.

The latest Google drones have just started taking flight in the real world. But the team behind the technology is slowing down, trimming headcount and shelving initiatives as the experimental unit becomes the latest target of tightening budgets across parent company Alphabet Inc.

In a closely guarded experiment involving the future of transportation, Project Wing — a division of X, founded by Google and now a child of Alphabet Inc. — is air-dropping fast food onto the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Drone technology is evolving so rapidly that companies such as UPS Inc., FedEx Corp. and Amazon.com could be using them within five years, according to industry watchers.

UPS Inc., teaming up with drone-maker CyPhy Works, announced drone tests to deliver packages in remote areas.

Mercedes-Benz is looking at mounting automated flying drones onto a new line of electric vans as part of a $562 million investment aimed at speeding delivery times for online orders.

BNSF Railway Co. is flying drones as far as 150 miles along the New Mexico desert to inspect tracks, helping the Federal Aviation Administration develop rules for operating unmanned aircraft beyond the pilot’s line of sight.

The Obama administration is opening U.S. skies to more commercial drones with long-awaited regulations that the government hopes will spawn new industries for inspecting bridges, monitoring crops and taking aerial photography.