I think it's more accurate to say that there is some barrier to entry, but maybe the barrier is not as high as Uber needs it to be.

When Lyft launched here in NYC it was pretty dead, and they lost the initiative with the initial batch of riders. They've since rallied around driver recruiting and now the service is good. Everyone I know here has multiple ride hailing apps installed, and multiple services are competitive with Uber re: driver availability.

So yeah, it's not trivially easy to get into this game, but it's also not absurdly difficult - you need someone with deep pockets, but not that deep. This is especially true because Uber's network effect between markets is pretty minimal - people mostly take rides in their home market, so it's easy for upstarts to compete for a single market without the pressure to take themselves global immediately.

One structural weakness on Uber's part (and Lyft's, too) is that their commissions are still quite high (20-25%?) and this gives a lot of room for competition. Juno launched here successfully simply by undercutting the commission.

I actually completely agree with all your points. I didn't mean to say these are insurmountable barriers, just to provide some counterweight to the argument there are no barriers to entry. One particular weakness you and others called out is that the network is mainly split into separate cities. So a competitor doesn't need to compete with Uber globally, but could just target a single city.

Additionally once Uber reached monopoly status and started raising prices, it would become more attractive to new entrants to enter the market. So even if Uber managed to beat all their competitors they still would have a price ceiling. All in all I think Uber provides a valuable service and can probably turn itself into a (very) profitable business, but I'm not convinced it will ever be the undisputed leader of all things transport that its current valuation seems to imply.

Yea, as soon as a rider fails to get a ride on one app they look elsewhere (that's how I tried Lyft for the first time and had a great experience).

With the legal barriers in place, I was incredibly impressed with Austin's Ride Austin arrangement. Incentivizing drivers to keep more money in their pocket is going to be pretty damn compelling and unique legal environments encourage new entrants.

Uber has an incredible brand and has become the "google it" of ride sharing. That's very valuable and defensible but it risks becoming a colloquial "kleenex" for ride sharing.

Uber takes $1.55 off the top for a booking fee and then 28% of the remaining fare. On a short trip it ends up being about 50% of the total. Of course they don't tell you that when they advertise that drivers make $19/hr (in fares). Lyft charges the same $1.55 fee and takes 25%.

The company that creates THE ride sharing broker wins.

The service will automatically hail from whichever service is the cheapest. Then pull an Amazon and expand into only the most profitable markets.

Why can't someone create a competing ride-sharing broker?

How many travel aggregator sites are there?

Yes, there are lots of those, because the travel industry realized people want to compare offerings before they make their priciest purchase of the year. Customers would themselves do manually what all those aggregator sites do automatically and they care less about who they are dealing with and more about the price tag.

In comparison, a taxi ride might not even be the priciest purchase of the day.

> More drivers in the network makes it faster to get a ride and therefore more attractive to riders.

All else being equal. A competitor boasting "hey, we're just like Uber, but with longer waits" probably won't get far. They could compete on

* lower price (fixed rate vs dynamic pricing, like Wingz)

* higher class of the vehicle

* support certain edge cases like kid-friendly service, bilingual service or women driver (hat tip Bojack Horseman Season 3 for that business idea)

Uber penetration is very low, a lot of cities don't have their serviços available so others can occupy these spaces without worrying with network effect at all. Uber is doomed.

What country are you talking about? Uber is available in every major US city, for a pretty loose definition of "major".

I was in Italy in June, and Uber was not very useful. I could not get a ride in Modena, Bologna and a few other places I tried.

I agree. I've never been anywhere in the US with lots of taxis where Uber wasn't.

It might be hard to understand for the typical American HN reader but the major USA cities are only a tiny fraction of the world.

There are more than 100 other countries out there with many cities in need of taxis.

Don't be an asshole. I was asking out of curiosity.