We can answer this question by simply looking at what Uber is without the smokescreen of "tech" and "disruption".
Uber is simply a very old and familiar way to circumvent labor, safety and consumer protection laws. It just happens to have two new elements enabled by tech: an app and dynamic pricing.
There is nothing "cool" or innovative about Uber. Many of the laws and regulations Uber runs afoul of aren't outdated, they exist very specifically because of operations like Uber, which existed in the days before smartphones and the internet.
And Uber brings absolutely nothing new to the table that changes the rationale behind those regulations. What the fuck is innovative about facilitating unlicensed taxi drivers in private cars? Hell, in Dutch we even have a word, "snorders", for such people, a word that has been barely used in decades until Uber popped up and revived it.
Uber is basically the kind of "business" that you would expect from an organized crime outfit, and their other dubious practices should come as no surprise.
I'm not big on buzzwords or vague subjective terms like "disruption," "innovative," or "cool." I also won't deny that Uber and other ridesharing services clearly violate laws (at least in some jurisdictions). But I don't believe that the fact that they violate laws means that they're not providing a valuable product. That's mostly because I don't believe that all laws which ostensibly protect consumers actually do.
> What the fuck is innovative about facilitating unlicensed taxi drivers in private cars?
Again, I'm not really concerned about the term "innovative." But what is good for me, the consumer of these services is that I can get a ride more conveniently, reliably, and inexpensively than I could from a traditional taxi or other commercial car service. And of course ridesharing apps are newer than taxis. If you define "innovative" as "newer and better," then I guess ridesharing services are "innovative."
Other consumers surely have different preferences, which is fine, but I do not care about licenses or who owns the cars. I care about the actual product I get, and I invariably (so far) get a better experience with ridesharing services than with traditional taxis. Now granted, I use Lyft and Sidecar over Uber, mostly just because of UI preferences with their iPhone apps. I'm speaking about the ridesharing industry as a whole rather than Uber specifically.
The gist of your argument seems to be one of two things. Either you dislike companies which violate any regulations, or you dislike companies which violate regulations that you approve of (with taxi regulations being one example). I disagree with both premises.
First off, let me say that I want someone to please counter my argument. I have been unable to see a valid counterargument so far.
I've thought about this quite a bit, anytime I see someone use the phrase 'disrupt an established company,' I assume they're talking about barely skirting the law through the use of hazy, gray areas. And an app.
The only 'innovation' in (most of) these companies is the same 'innovation' that this site screams about when it's on the part of patent trolls; I will do X, but now I will do X with a smart phone or computer. That's not innovative, it's lazy.
It would be super easy for giant companies to meet the same prices if they were able to ignore laws. That's not competition, it's cheating.
Its hard to counter an argument that includes vague terms like "most".
Some companies do what you're describing.
Some companies who are trying to "disrupt an established company" are doing so because they're leveraging new technology, changes in the marketplace, and/or the fact that they're unencumbered with politics/contracts/bureaucracy that exist in large companies.
Okay, take out the 'most' out and I still stand by the very declarative, very encompassing statement.
But, for sake of example, take companies like Airbnb and Uber specifically, as they seem to be the hottest touch-points. How is what they're doing not simply breaking the law for sake of price?
The reason so much disruption comes from "barely skirting the law" is because government sets up the law/regulation to entrench these old business models. So much of what the US government does today is in service of big business, not necessarily adhering to whatever moral standard you have in mind for the rule of law.
Uber has to use the gray areas precisely because regulation was set up to prevent disruption of the cab industry. This regulation inhibits growth and promotes stagnation, evidenced by the fact that NYC cabs did not accept credit cards until 2007 and by how obviously under-served the SF cab market was.
Uber, by skirting the laws that were not serving the consumer but rather entrenching an industry has been able to do more in five years than the entire taxi industry has in 50.
I think you have the chicken and egg backwards. Issues with quality and service are what formed regulation in the first place. Regulation exists to fix a problem; look at the history of transportation, and the current state of 3rd world country transportation.
Cabs were dangerous and took advantage of people before regulation, much as 3rd world country cabs do today.
Your argument is not persuasive and is very short-sighted in terms of history.
And to take it one more step: Lead-uber, by skirting the laws that were not serving the consumer but rather entrenching an industry has been able to do more in five years than the entire lead mining industry has in 50.
Does that make you feel comfortable about 'disruption'? What makes mass transportation any different?
I may be wrong, but I doubt the initial laws were setup to protect the cab industry. It solved a problem of safety, reliability, and set prices with cabs. See third world countries where a cab ride can easily mean a kidnapping or robbery at worst, or a fleecing at best. I'm sure once the basic infrastructure was in place cab companies used their lobbies to further entrench, but the basic laws are there for consumer protection.
You seem unduly concerned with the terms "innovative" and "disruptive." Perhaps you should try to define the terms more clearly before arguing about which companies qualify.
It seems to be prevalent in Baltimore. I couldn't find the "many" places that hacks are common names for illegal cabs. Chicago, Philadelphia and NYC all use hack to refer to legally licensed cabs and they're all much larger cities/metropolitan areas than Baltimore. I think this is why it is much more common to use "hack" to describe a legitimate taxi driver. Thank you for your input.
In the 1940s, absolutely. I haven't heard it said out loud except to describe a gypsy cab in my life (not including movies.) I have heard it used to describe the license.
I understand that cab drivers have been called hacks, and that of course the term's origin is more general than its current usage. I hear "hack license" but I never hear "hack" as a verb except to refer to doing it illegally.
edit: or as an anything but something before the word "license." You've heard a legitimate taxi driver called a hack lately?
I would liken Yelp to be closer to organized crime than Uber. Yelp subtly shakes down businesses as part of their revenue through the "People love us on Yelp" program to earn the sticker on their business and because of the perception Yelp creates that paying customers will show up higher on the search results page and with a higher Yelp rating.
It has been documented that Yelp actively solicits sponsorship fees that not only help earn these stickers but also subsequently serve to boost business rankings and ratings.
As unsavory as their business practice is, I wouldn't go that far, yet. Organized crime is much more than an organization which commits crimes. Money laundering, racketeering, extortion, murder and/or assault, trafficking in contraband, prostitution rings, corruption in public office, and many more factors are part of being organized crime. It's a complex system that goes far beyond Uber's anti-competitive practices, deplorable though they are.
It might appear that bvanslyke is correct because if Uber is understood to be breaking the law and that revolves around the core of their business then they could be considered in the business of organized crime.
I can't help but question whether the difference is doing something illegal to obtain the money and THAT being the organized crime part or the fact that their means of generating revenue could be viewed as legal but that it isn't legal because of consumer protection and liability laws.
In other words, shaking someone down for protection money is illegal. Driving someone from point A to point B is legal. Doing it as an unlicensed cab is illegal but the actual practice isn't.
I liken what they do to be more closer to how Tesla chooses to sell their cars. Legal in theory and and ethically positive but not legal in some areas due to skirting the line between where the laws come into place.
I don't think RICO statutes would be a very strong case against Uber.
Are you technically an unlicensed cab if you won't drive your friend to the airport unless he gives you gas money?
I think they certainly could reach some level of organized crime status if they keep sliding down the already slippery slope they are on. I didn't mean for it to sound like all of those things I listed were required for that classification, they were just meant as examples. Here's the actual definition straight from the FBI:
"The FBI defines organized crime as any group having some manner of a formalized structure and whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities. Such groups maintain their position through the use of actual or threatened violence, corrupt public officials, graft, or extortion, and generally have a significant impact on the people in their locales, region, or the country as a whole."
The difference between Uber's business model and Tesla's is that, unlike Uber, Tesla isn't trying to get other dealerships shut down by wasting their money with fake customers, nor are they poaching and trying to convert employees over to their company. Tesla is trying to get rid of outdated laws that, in today's day and age, only encourage dealerships to screw over their customers. There was a time when those laws served their original purpose, to protect dealers from manufacturers. But the world has changed a lot since then.
>
"The FBI defines organized crime as any group having some manner of a formalized structure and whose primary objective is to obtain money through illegal activities. Such groups maintain their position through the use of actual or threatened violence, corrupt public officials, graft, or extortion, and generally have a significant impact on the people in their locales, region, or the country as a whole."
This does not describe Uber's activities. While there is plenty wrong with Uber the hyperbole of describing them as near organised crime is unhelpful.
Uber used fake rides as a recruitment technique; they did not knee-cap drivers for other companies.
People don't say that, because "organized crime" is an idiom that carries more specific meaning than simply "crime which is organized." Two coworkers who arrange to carpool and then exceed the speed limit are committing crime which is organized, but I also wouldn't describe them as engaging in "organized crime."
The organized part in organized from refers to an organization. The crime part obviously refers to the crime but the actual definition refers to the fact that the organization gets its revenue through the commission of crime.
It isn't quite the same as committing a planned crime.
I wish the title of this post on Hacker News could be the context-providing "Uber allegedly revealed well-known rider's location without consent for promotional purposes".
I respectfully disagree. I find the title to be accurate to the question being posed. It doesn't feel that the article was about that direct incident so much as an exploration of the way we choose providers and whether something as vague as company's "morals" should and could drive those decisions. We're currently in a fascinating time where companies like AirBnb, Uber and others are innovating faster than the law can keep up. At some point it's up to us as a society to self regulate even if its just at an individual level.
The article is not just about the one thing you mentioned. The first example in the article of why we should question whether to trust Uber is the corporate attacks that Uber allegedly waged against Lyft.
It seems like every time I see Uber in the news they're being assholes in one way or another to their customers, drivers, competitors, and governments of all types.
My fairly worthless opinions as an NYC Startup Programmer:
1) 'Disruption' is just a code-word for skimming margins in legal grey areas
2) The founder of Uber's twitter avatar used to be the cover of "Atlas Shrugged" (update: it's now a picture of Thomas Jefferson.)
3) Only tourists and transplants believe using an app is in any way better than simply hailing a cab (with exception for storms, bad times, and bad locations)
No idea why this company ever deserved my trust in the first place.
> 3) Only tourists and transplants believe using an app is in any way better than simply hailing a cab (with exception for storms, bad times, and bad locations)
You don't get taxis very often. From my experience in Chicago. They're everywhere you want them to be. There are huge dead zones for taxis. (Webster/Clybourn, Grand/New Orleans, Western/Armitage anytime before 6pm, Humboldt park, 5am in Old Town [4am bars have a 5am cut off in Chicago on Saturdays]). They tend to be either: a. on the phone the whole freaking time speaking Hindi or b. blasting music.
They also tend to pull shit like: "Oh my CC machine is broken, please give me cash" (which is against the ordinance), they'll try to use their square payment reader instead (which is also a big no-no), etc.
Uber cuts that out. With Uber, despite my bad experiences, they're consistently better.
You don't get taxis very often. From my experience in Chicago.
I'm pretty sure the OP was only referring to NYC.
And even then, only Manhattan. Uber and the like have made it a lot easier to book private cars, though it's difficult to know what the green "Boro" taxis would look like if the apps hadn't launched.
> 3) Only tourists and transplants believe using an app is in any way better than simply hailing a cab (with exception for storms, bad times, and bad locations)
Spoken like someone who never leaves Manhattan. ;-)
For those who don't live in an "outer-borough", the way you obtained car services was by dialing a phone number, talking to a dispatcher, trying to communicate pickup and dropoff locations through the fog of accents, and then you have a 25% chance of the car showing up when promised, a 75% chance of it showing up no more than 15 minutes late, and sometimes 2-3 additional follow-up phone calls were required.
If I'm going from tribeca to the east village at 11pm, sure, I'm taking a cab. But if I need to come home from New Jersey, being able to press a button and get a car is a huge convenience.
Curious as to what makes you believe #3. Transplant here, but many life-long friends are NYC born and bred, and nearly all of them choose Uber over cabs quite often. Maybe the locals you know have just become numb to how shitty cabs here are ("it is what it is") and are fine with it?
I'm a live-long born-and-bred Manhattanite and I use uberX any time I'm not already on the street; it's roughly the cost of a yellow cab and much more convenient and pleasant. (And you get an SUV about 1/2 the time, even after they stopped forcing the SUV drivers to accept uberX calls.)
I also, just last week, took my mom to the hospital lying down in an Uber SUV which was (even at the 1.5 rate) a whole lot cheaper than an ambulance, and more convenient even than their own car which we would have had to get out of the garage and then park at the hospital.
I live in NYC (and have for 8 years now), and most people I know use Uber here. It's cheaper, easier to split, and more reliable.
Sure, you can hail a cab pretty easily most of the time in NYC, but I've definitely had enough times where I've had no luck (they were all full) after waiting 10 or 15 minutes that I now prefer Uber.
>(with exception for storms, bad times, and bad locations)
I think using the app is justified b/c there are way more bad times/locations than good times/locations. If I'm outside in midtown I'd probably grab a yellow cab, but otherwise it's either subway or uber.
But at its core, Uber is a black-market taxi service (unlicensed vendor operating in a regulated market). Just like cigarettes and alcohol are cheaper in the black market where vendors don't pay taxes, one would expect Uber to be cheaper than the taxis that have to pay medallion fees and meet licensing regs. Cheaper doesn't mean right. If you like Uber, lobby to change taxi cab regulations (and I think you may find that while there may be room for improvement in their implementation, there are reasons for taxi cab regulations).
Here in New York all Uber drivers are registered with the Taxi & Limousine Commission and have to meet city requirement re: licensing and insurance. I'm sure Uber would be happy to comply with the regulations that cities eventually come up with as long as those regulations are focused more on protecting consumers and less on protecting the old taxi industry.
Uber Black perhaps, but not UberX, which is by far the focus of Uber now. Around here Uber specifically advertises UberX as a taxi, and openly does price comparisons between it and taxi fares (as opposed to price comparisons against other limo services).
Let's also not forget that Uber started as Ubercab and was forced to change their name. I don't think they ever intended to be a limo service, and their current product offerings are largely not limo services.
And what about the other stories about bad cabbies and other people's not-so-good experiences with the traditional system?
I reckon services like Uber are a good way to shake up the in-inefficiencies and built-in-slackness that accumulates within a protected service industry. There is absolutely nothing stopping the "real" taxi industry adopting apps and tech services to counter Uber -- in fact they would be way ahead in other more "background" aspects such as insurance, vetting drivers, heck, even brand name awareness among the general public. For example, we had taxi companies put out apps here in Australia long before Uber. In my experience they have been about 90% reliable (this was in the early days) and I'm certain they have improved now. And the taxi companies definitely have the pockets and data to drive this.
Once the shake-up is complete a set of equilibrium should be established -- as services like Uber would also be forced to implement proper checks on drivers, etc. At which point the idiots spouting off $18 billion figures should wake up from their dreams.
Bang-on. But it's not just startups, it's companies - period. Stallman, love him or hate him is correct - in these cases, you're the product. If the source isn't open, or at least if enough of it isn't open, you can't trust the company.
My favourite, most gregarious example is Privacy Polices. Sure, in certain jurisdictions (i.e. mine) they're legal documents. But equally, a company could bury in their terms of service something along the lines of 'We, the organization, to the best of our knowledge abide by the Privacy Policy. In the case where this is untrue, our liability is limited to XXX'.
Open source doesn't do anything to help with this kind of stuff. Not one thing.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Facebook released the full code of their social networking application under the GPL. That promises us very little in terms of our privacy, because they could easily (and perhaps should, from an engineering standpoint) stick all the privacy violation in a separate application for doing the analytics or providing data to 3rd parties.
Open source doesn't even do much of anything to limit what kinds of data can be collected through the front end. The original owner of the code retains copyright, so open source licenses place no legal restrictions on what they can do with the code. There's nothing stopping an unscrupulous company from sharing a squeaky-clean version of the source with the world at large, and running different code on their servers.
If anything, this is where I find Stallman to be at his least useful. He's only got this one hammer in a world where the vast majority of the most worrisome ethical concerns are not nails. His dogged insistence on trying to turn every moral and political issue in computing into one that can be answered by open source[1] is neither realistic nor practical, and only serves to illustrate that his ideas all became fixed long before Berners-Lee came along and changed everything.
That model - that open source is more trustworthy - was meant to apply to code you could read then compile from source on your machine. But the web is entirely a network of black-box applications you (legally) interact with in a passive sense - send request, get response. You really have no idea what's going on in the back-end, and no control over what they choose to do with what you put on their servers. And you definitely have no way to verify the code, apart from headers and responses.
Which version of GPL? cik was perhaps misleading when he referenced rms but then talked about 'open source' (rather than 'free software'). I note you continue with the phrase 'open source', to argue against rms's position (which is very much anti 'open source' both as an appellation and concept). It suggests, if you'll excuse my bluntness, that you don't quite get it.
You also seem to assume a very narrow use case of that FB source code (were it released to public scrutiny).
I used the broader category because in these kinds of situations Free Software brings nothing to the party.
Free Software licensing only places restrictions on what licensees of the software can do with it. The original copyright holder, by virtue of possessing the original copyright, is not subject to those restrictions. That's why dual Free/commercial licensing is such a common choice for companies who are looking to monetize - it's an easy way to maintain commercial control over a product while still getting to call yourself "open".
RMS is not about OpenSource, he is about FreeSoftware, as in Software that respects its users freedom. Its an ethical mindset for programmers, not a method of distribution. You could easily program and distribute binary blobs for money as FreeSoftware, but only you would know it then. The problem is trust. Can you be trusted to respect your users freedom? That is the point where OpenSource might help to build trust, but it is not mandatory.
Our startup's motto isn't "don't be evil". It is more prosaic: "People live lives, companies create products." I feel that clearly shows what the company should be focused on, and also helps show how it should interact with its employees and customers.
If faced with a choice between money and doing the right thing, corporations are legally obligated (c.f. Dodge v. Ford) to pick money every single time.
> More recent cases such as AP Smith Manufacturing Co v. Barlow[2] or Shlensky v. Wrigley[3] suggest that the approach in Dodge no longer represents the law in most states, including Delaware, which regards the balancing of stakeholder interests as within a director's business judgment. Dodge has not been expressly overruled, but ceased to represent the law in most states.
Courts will bend over backward to defer to an executive's business judgment when there is no conflict of interest or similar wrongdoing in play.
> If faced with a choice between money and doing the right thing, corporations are legally obligated (c.f. Dodge v. Ford) to pick money every single time.
That is a popular meme, but it is simply not true. More recent court cases[1][2] have found that corporate directors have broad discretion in their decisions as long as there is no fraud or conflict of interest. If the board of directors chooses to prioritize doing the right thing over pure maximization of profit, the shareholders' only recourse is to choose a new board of directors.
Only a publicly traded company would be subject to Dodge v. Ford.
Even then, making money and doing the right thing are rarely a strict dichotomy.
Trying to sue start ups out of existence is not the only way to ensure the profitability of an incumbent company. Lawsuits always have the risk of losing and flushing all of those legal costs down the toilet, or potentially inviting countersuits. A company like Fab for instance could've just as easily decided to buy the new competitor or get more aggressive on price or marketing to snuff them out.
Only a publicly traded company would be subject to Dodge v. Ford.
...or startups that have publicly traded corporations as investors (which is approximately all of them).
Don't delude yourself into thinking you can trust a corporation. Corporations are sociopathic by design, barely kept in check by threats of lawsuits and bad PR.
Here's part of Wikipedia's description of the case you cited:
> By 1916, the Ford Motor Company had accumulated a capital surplus of $60 million. The price of the Model T, Ford's mainstay product, had been successively cut over the years while the cost of the workers had dramatically, and quite publicly, increased. The company's president and majority stockholder, Henry Ford, sought to end special dividends for shareholders in favor of massive investments in new plants that would enable Ford to dramatically increase production, and the number of people employed at his plants, while continuing to cut the costs and prices of his cars. In public defense of this strategy, Ford declared:
> “My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business. ”
> While Ford may have believed that such a strategy might be in the long-term benefit of the company, he told his fellow shareholders that the value of this strategy to them was not a primary consideration in his plans. The minority shareholders objected to this strategy, demanding that Ford stop reducing his prices when they could barely fill orders for cars and to continue to pay out special dividends from the capital surplus in lieu of his proposed plant investments. Two brothers, John Francis Dodge and Horace Elgin Dodge, owned 10% of the company, among the largest shareholders next to Ford.
I don't have time to read the actual court documents, so I'll assume this is reasonably accurate.
It seems Ford was trying to say "screw shareholder value, we're doing the right thing because we want to support society." This was of course a losing argument. But it sounds like the whole problem was the argument. Couldn't the argument be "we did the right thing and took a short-term loss, but we believe this is in the company's, and by extension the shareholders', best interest because [it will create tons of goodwill | it creates tons of good PR for us | whatever]"?
Yeah, all the board/CEO has to do is say "we think this is in the long-term interest of the shareholders." Then the shareholders would have to prove that's wrong, which is essentially impossible.
I've watched people destroy companies I've built, and the fact is that there is very little you can do to legally stop them.
Of course you can't. That's crystal-clear by now. They've been called out more times than I can count in the last 6 months.
"Does it matter?" That's the question that puzzles me, because seems that Uber got the pockets and backers to continue it's aggressive progression towards cabs annihilation.
Uber cars aren't gypsy or livery cabs because the difference is that gypsy and livery cabs often try to shake down the passenger for more money than what was previously quoted or agreed on.
I had the exact experience that monksy outlined and it happened with Yellow Cab (largest taxi provider in So Cal afaik) and I discovered the next day that my card was used to ring up almost $1000 in gas and purchases almost 80 miles from my house in a city I've never been to in my entire life. This obviously doesn't mean that all taxi drivers are unscrupulous like this but you can't help but appreciate that Uber and Lyft provide something not so trivial as a way to pay without having to factor in an unethical driver.
Can we trust Uber? Not entirely. Shouldn't the question be, can we trust Uber (and by proxy , Lyft) more than the alternatives?
> Can we trust Uber? Not entirely. Shouldn't the question be, can we trust Uber (and by proxy , Lyft) more than the alternatives?
But at that point you still must answer the question: Do you trust Lyft or other alternatives more than Uber? Given the evidence we have, I don't trust Uber to tell me the sky is blue; I'm damn sure not doing business with them.
When I moved to the Bay Area, I was amazed at how bad cabbies were. They were expensive, took a long time to show up, often flaked out on even showing up and often refused to take me where I wanted to go.
Über was a breath of fresh air. I rationalized their competitive gaffs with Lyft as "they're just competing" and their syncretic religion of Ayn Rand books and Clayton Christensen as objectionable but tolerable. But I don't use them anymore. I started to use Uber constantly, refer friends and some OSS I've written even powers Uber's node.js components today.
But their support of Urban Shield is the straw that broke the camel's back. And I do not want to line the pockets of anyone accelerating the militarization of the police in the US. Like the author, I can't see myself trusting them to do what's right.
You can probably trust Uber just about as much as you can trust the TLC. The only real difference is that Uber has a bit more real--time data they can mine. Even if you only pay for your cabs in cash, your privacy can be compromised by pick up/drop off point meta data (http://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars...).
Then what about all the other plethora of apps and OS features that do background location tracking. Can we trust them?
I think this problem really goes beyond Uber and touches on something fundamental about how we can maintain privacy when everyday technology asks for so much more personal information to operate.....
Maybe we need more robust data privacy laws. Maybe we need better technology that allows for identity obfuscation or anonymity. Maybe we need to mature as a society so transparency is less likely to lead to harassment, violence or discrimination. Maybe it is a combination of all of the above.
I just don't think you should leave it up to Uber.
Except that the the yellow cab leaks are unintentional and based on ignorance, and these are (allegedly) based on intentional disregard for privacy. So I don't agree that the two are the same at all.
These are shocking and worrisome allegations, but I do want to hear Uber's response. Perhaps they asked certain well-known users if they wanted their locations to be revealed and there was a miscommunication? It seems unlikely, I admit, but there tend to be two sides to every story.
If the allegations are true and there was no miscommunication, Uber violated its privacy policy and should be held accountable. Note I'm not calling for FTC action, but (again, if this is true) Uber's management owes me and other users an explanation, an apology, and a plan for privacy controls to ensure this doesn't happen again. Firing the person responsible would not be inappropriate. You can read the privacy policy yourself here:
https://www.uber.com/legal/usa/privacy#3
It's also a little depressing. I've taken pains to try to get privacy "right" when working on http://recent.io/, including being extremely sensitive about location privacy, and examples like this (again, if true) will make folks less likely to trust apps in general. It's a shame because phone owners will assume that if you can't trust the billion-dollar lawyered-up companies to get privacy right, you surely can't trust the smaller ones. So it becomes safer not to install the apps in the first place. :(
THIS IS ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE, and MAY BE COINCEDENTAL: I was having serious problems using Uber because both forms of payment I was using were failing processing. They were both credit cards I had used earlier in the night, and were both certainly valid. I became frustrated, and as Uber has no customer support I had to sort out contingency. I downloaded lyft and then Uber started to work. It processed both cards and let me request a a car (if it does not process it saves the info but does not let you request). So instantly, without me doing anything, I was immeadiately able to use Uber after I downloaded lyft, without doing anything extra. So I now exclusively use Lyft. It has been cheaper for all comparable distances I can track.
The service is useful at a usually-fair price. If it works, use it.
Hopefully we can agree that Uber doing things like corporate attacks against Lyft might say something about their character that should give you pause on dealing with them. For example, someone willing to unfairly attack a competitor might also think nothing of disclosing a customer's location in real time without permission for promotional purposes. Oh, they reportedly did that too. With a pattern of poor judgment, it only makes sense to question whether you should use them even if it generally just works.
For me at least, it's not even the questionable morality of pulling dirty tricks on your biggest competitor. It's the fact that Uber feels they have to do these dirty deeds to get ahead in the game. If you feel you can't compete on a level playing field and you have to do such things to keep up, it tells me that you don't have a clue how to really do business in the first place.
If I can't trust Uber to build a better product instead of sabotaging their competitor, I'll go with their competitor by default.
That's actually the greatest argument for regulation. Few people are able to comprehend exactly what Uber's level of data access means to them - same goes for Facebook, Google and the rest. It does - at a basic level - make sense for people who do know to draft legislation to protect those that do not.
The service provider is not a human, its goals are not those of humans. It provides you cheap service because it's weak, it needs to feed in order to grow stronger, to fight the others of his kind, money-eating beasts we call companies.
Don't think for a second Uber will continue to provide useful service at fair price when it finally grows mature and stifles its competition. With its continued disrespect for human values, such as honesty and decency, it already shows us the shape of things to come. We know this beast will not be friendly to men.
Uber needs to be slain now, while still young and weak.
> Don't think for a second Uber will continue to provide useful service at fair price when it finally grows mature and stifles its competition.
I don't think for a second that Uber wants to continue to provide its service at a low price, but barrier to entry in the market is relatively low. Unless something changes on the legal front, I don't see how Uber can stifle its competition.
Why do you think the barrier to entry is low? It seems extremely high to me. There's a massive network effect in play. I imagine competing with Uber at this point would cost millions of dollars per city.
Perhaps we are speaking of costs on different scales. Uber is valued at 18 Billion. Millions of dollars per city sounds like a low barrier of entry to me. If almost any small start-up can afford to compete with Uber in one city and a well funded one could compete in dozens, yeah I call that a low barrier to entry.
Lyft has surge pricing also - called Prime Time - but is structured in a way that makes me more willing to participate. The extra price goes 100% to the driver, Lyft does not take a cut.
I'm always wary of Uber manipulating surge pricing since they profit off of surge as well. Without the extra profit motive it's easier to trust that surge pricing really is a supply-management tool instead of a price gouging one.
I took lift earlier today. Surge pricing was 2.25 and then fell to 2.0x. Lift prime time went up from 0.75 to 1.0x for the same area in the five minute span. Also, lift has typically been cheaper FOR ME.
Uber is simply a very old and familiar way to circumvent labor, safety and consumer protection laws. It just happens to have two new elements enabled by tech: an app and dynamic pricing.
There is nothing "cool" or innovative about Uber. Many of the laws and regulations Uber runs afoul of aren't outdated, they exist very specifically because of operations like Uber, which existed in the days before smartphones and the internet.
And Uber brings absolutely nothing new to the table that changes the rationale behind those regulations. What the fuck is innovative about facilitating unlicensed taxi drivers in private cars? Hell, in Dutch we even have a word, "snorders", for such people, a word that has been barely used in decades until Uber popped up and revived it.
Uber is basically the kind of "business" that you would expect from an organized crime outfit, and their other dubious practices should come as no surprise.