>Where's the competition then?

I use Lyft in the bay area a couple of times a week and haven't noticed any gaps from when I used to use Uber.

Lyft also consistently costs about $1 less for the same options in the Bay Area.

Its really a matter of someone building it and networking effects and momentum turning into popularity, but there are at least a few decentralized platforms out there that could create a non-profit open source non-commercialized Uber alternative that individuals who want to sell taxi services could use. The key part is obviously decentralized payment -- something along the lines of Bitcoin or Ethereum (lightning networks? etc.) is needed -- but there are increasing numbers of less well-known options.

It may take a few years but there is just too much incentive to move away from the technopoly companies like Uber, Amazon, and Google etc. to decentralized open platforms.

I love decentralized technologies as much as you, but it has one major obvious flaw, which is speed to achieve consensus. Riders want their ride request experience to be flawless and fast. Dispatching would be much slower in a decentralized system and so would driver acknowledgement. This latency to consensus worsens the experience so much that you quickly will revert back to a more centralized solution.

Furthermore, the anonymity from such technologies would greatly undermine trust between riders and drivers. Neither would know if their counterparty is a theif, rapist or simply doesn't have a valid license, safe vehicle or sufficient insurance in case of an accident.

Really, if you stop and think about it, the decentralized model has so many obvious flaws that make it unworkable except maybe in a country with a despotic totalitarian government that uses TNCs for spying on people, such that they are willing to suffer the shortcomings for the benefits of anonymity.

Latency to consensus and anonymity are common characteristics of most decentralized systems, but they don't have to be. Actually those are problems already for most if not all decentralized systems, and have many viable paths for solutions worked out (just not very popular yet).

I'm open to be proven wrong here, but I also work on two large distributed systems each with thousands of servers spanning multiple datacenters that can handle concurrent reads/writes, so I'm pretty familiar with the space. In my system, mean times between servers in the same datacenter are a few milliseconds and p99s are between 7ms and 30 ms depending on the call.

Beyond a handwavy "[there are] many viable paths for solutions worked out", how exactly would you architect such systems so that you can build a solution that produces a customer experience that is competitive against a mostly centralized system now that your solution needs to contend with inter-server latencies that are about two orders of magnitude higher due to the speed of light and the network hops involved?

First of all, creating a decentralized Uber-style app is not the same as emulating your particular system in a decentralized way. Of course we cannot have a bunch of widely distributed computers chatting as quickly as your computers in your datacenter.

The essential parts are: finding nearby drivers, maps on two screens, communicating updated position between the two phones, and payment. Finding nearby drivers means that a group of devices in the same geographic area need to be able to talk to each other. I feel like this is right up the alley of distributed systems. The GPS updates really only require communication between the two devices at ordinary internet speeds and updates every few seconds. For payment I do not need to invent anything, we can use Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any of the many high-transaction solutions that are coming out built on those or other cryptocurrencies. So if you want to suppose that it is impossible to have a high transaction rate with cryptocurrency, I don't have time to get into it. But I will say that the main thing that makes people think that is that they assume zero trust and that every single computer must validate every single transaction. Those just aren't _actually_ requirements.

But give it 2 years, maybe 5 years, this stuff will get sorted out. Until then there will always be naysayers saying it is impossible.

>Uber's platform is miles ahead of everything else

Huh, I don't know. There are about three competitors in my area. They all have an app. I enter my destination, someone picks me up, drops me off. Simple stuff. What's so great about Uber exactly?

Uber isn't even available here. Its competitors are. And they have apps.

You're in Germany. When you say competitors, you're only talking about taxis with medallions because the TNC business model is still illegal. You actually don't know what you're missing because your government won't allow you to know.

Is it? Do you mean the driver platform? The rider apps are nearly indistinguishable at this point save for the fact that Uber has the logistical draw for the driver of lining you up for your next ride while you are still wrapping up your last one, which to the end user signals extra waiting time (even though it might actually be less time than calling a ride from Lyft where every driver that could answer is available but further away).

What am I missing out on as a consumer by using Lyft instead of Uber? As far as I can tell the answer is nothing.

One big thing is if you travel a lot, there is much greater chance that Uber will work when you get off the plane at a random destination then there is with Lyft.

Uber has better ETA to pickup, better Pool matching and routes and better prices in aggregate (i.e. If you always choose one TNC for all rides instead of shopping both apps every trip, you'll spend less on Uber).

Uber also have better minor features that you're less likely to appreciate until you need them like lost item recovery and spoitify integration.

Via just started in NYC giving out 5$ rides, International markets have a lot of competing apps such as Ola,Rapido and OyeTaxi in India, Russia has Yandex, China has Didi amongt others etc etc. Uber's business model does seem like its on thin ice and the edge it has in the market is mostly price driven as of now. That was what the article is emphasizing on I guess.

Umm, there's a reason they've pretty much exited every other international market. Russia - Yandex, China - Didi, SE Asia - Grab, India - Ola, Germany, Uk etc. Lots of competitors. It's only NA where they're a clear leader.

You're grossly overstating things.

17.5% stake in Didi Chuxing is nothing to scoff at, especially considering that Uber has done better than both Facebook and Google as far as China is concerned. Apple is the only US tech company that is really succeeding in China.

33.6% stake in YandexTaxi and international Uber users can continue to use the app to hail Yandex drivers when visiting Russia. That's also far far better than Facebook and Google have fared in Russia.

In India, Uber is beating Ola. In Latam, Uber is easily beating both 99Taxis and EasyTaxi. In the Middle East, Uber is beating Careem. Uber is absolutely dominating in Mexico and other Latam countries.

Besides Didi Chuxing and YandexTaxi, the only international competitor doing well relatively against Uber is Grab, and AFAICT, Grab's success relative to Uber is largely isolated to Grab's home country Malaysia and Indonesia where they have invested most heavily. If you take all of Southeast Asia, it appears to be neck and neck.

Uber is doing well in relatively well in Europe all things considered, and winning in Europe is just a matter of time. I highly doubt the local taxi offerings will survive autonomous vehicles.

Gojek is also crushing Indonesia. They started a bankless payments system and are expanding beyond just rides now, pretty cool stuff that dominates in their own market.

They're not anywhere close to leaving India. If you think otherwise, citation please.

Since when did Uber leave the UK? I'm pretty sure I used them a month ago.

South and Central America appear to be pretty locked down. Also Oceana.

What is the competition in Europe besides existing taxi services?

The important thing to notice here is that the economics of this sector vary greatly by country and often times local companies will get a hand from their respective govts. These are fundamental services that provide a livelihood to lots of unskilled labor. One misstep and you'll see massive protests, like what happened in France. I wouldn't be surprised if Brazil for instance has a lot of up and coming competitors.

The engineering talent is severely lacking in Brazil to actually be competitive with Silicon Valley. I've worked in tech in Brazil and I wish it were better. Every single Brazilian engineer I've ever met good enough to work at Uber either already works in international markets like the SF Bay Area, Seattle, NYC and Amsterdam or they are in Brazil working remotely for international companies.

NuBank is the only tech company in Brazil I know of with solid engineers. Globo isn't that bad for frontend. UOL also has one single solid team backend with about four solid engineers.

Brazil's biggest problem is that it doesn't invest enough in education, especially English language skills. Every country competitive in software engineering has relatively strong English as a Second Language skills (at least among their brightest): China, India, South Korea, Japan, Russia, Europe.

If you don't have solid English comprehension among your country's most talented, you'll never produce world class engineering talent in sufficient quantities since the overwhelming majority of technical content is in English.