> Any competitor wanting to get its foot in the door would only need to pay Google enough money

Or indeed Google develops a competitor themselves if Uber and Lyft gain 9-digit valuations. It could do that in less than a year and for a few hundred millions at most. Taking a page out of Apple's book of vertical integration and squashing popular services with in-house offerings.

> Any competitor wanting to get its foot in the door would only need to pay Google enough money to get itself listed there (which is to say, Google can enter this market for free whenever it wants to). N

That assumes that the feature in Maps not only exists but is widely used by consumers in preference to individual service apps; my impression is that that is not really the case.

My impression is the opposite, so in the absence of harder evidence we're at an impasse. But even if Google Maps isn't widely used, Google could trivially spend the cash to market the feature if it wished to, or hell, just pop up an alert upon opening the Lyft or Uber app on Android that says "Did you know that you can compare ride-sharing prices across all services in your area via Google Maps? Click here to try it!" (in the same way that visiting any Google property on a non-Google browser pesters the user into downloading Chrome). Google already owns the platform, Google already owns the maps data, Google already owns the users.

That’s a compelling reason to use non-Google apps. Don’t they have enough hooks in my data already? I still think you might be right ultimately since most people prioritize price and convenience over their long term best interests.