In a strictly legal and technical sense yes, but IMHO a company going down the toilet that is sold for parts at a loss hasn’t really survived in any meaningful sense.

Correct, the main difference (in my mind, open to other arguments) is how financial resources are allocated.

Right now, Uber and Lyft are burning a ton of money on customer acquisition with the goals of gaining enough scale to be sustainable, independent companies.

Relating this back to the great-grandparent post, there's an alternative: Google and Apple could use their existing brand recognition and software reach to maintain wide-scale car-ordering apps without having to spend as much (certainly still some) and with bigger balance sheets to take any short term financial hits. Then they could let the supply (drivers and the cost of rides) and demand (how many customers will pay for non-VC subsidized cars) play itself out over time, instead of the Uber/Lyft model of trying to juice both sides of the marketplace with excess spend.

Would the only future for these products be a mix of human and autonomous fleets? And eventually, purely autonomous?

If so, does this presuppose Apple’s vision is to include mass transportation as (a major) part of its products?