Re:Can Uber ever make money?
by standardUser on Friday April 26, 2019 @08:49PM
(#19763023)
In San Francisco there was nothing before Uber and similar companies started operating. You called a phone number (I used to have it memorized) and some surly individual would bark at you and then maybe a taxi would come in 40 minutes or maybe not.
Later, the driver would explain the credit card machine was broken and you'd need to pay in cash.
There were a ton of taxi related apps but none of them did what Uber did; at least in London. There were apps where you could book a taxi, telling them when and where to pick you up, but if you expected anyone to show up in the next 5 minutes you were crazy. And they were twice as expensive as uber, of course.
My impression was the the previous tax-related apps just connected riders with the existing establishment taxi companies. They didn't have much in the realm of enforcing accountability or reliability. It was nearly the same as calling the taxi dispatcher yourself and hoping a taxi would show up, except an app would do it for you.
No it wasn't. There were a ton of taxi related apps and startups before Uber and nothing about Uber's app was particularly impressive IP-wise - it's basically just distance search.
What Uber did that was unusual for a tech startup was to invest in lobbying - https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/14/7390395/uber-lobbying-st... - it allowed them to play across regulated markets where no one else had before.