That doesn't jive with the story that Uber is providing a marketplace to connect independent drivers and passengers. Maybe Uber has dropped that way of framing what it does, but that's how they used to present themselves, as a technology company enabling transactions between drivers and passengers. Under that framing, where Uber is enabling a transaction instead of participating in two transactions, this would be like an online broker that sells your stock at $15.27 per share, tells you it sold at $15.25 per share, and pockets the $0.02 per share in addition to its advertised fees for the transaction.