They might have to pivot into a chat company

Only profitable if they can ever find a way to make the chat self-driving.

Group chats all ready are:

You can take your hands off completely, even go and do something else, read a book, write an email, book some flights, and the chat will drive itself ... somewhere.

With more and more chat and email apps offering auto-generated/suggested replies (e.g. what Gmail offers) we're on our way there.

I might actually hire an Uber for the express purpose of having someone to talk to. In Germany, taxi drivers were often former "German studies" or Philosophy students who did not find a job, so it was kind of guaranteed that you'd have a competent, honest communication partner (albeit left leaning).

I think that's brilliant. I'm curious as to why it is not regarded as proper job. I don't think it's unique to Germany though. I think it is as honorable an occupation as any. And for the philosophical types it might actually be quite a good occupation as it may not be as taxing on the mind (apart from the time they spent thinking on their favorite subjects). That frees them up to study, research and write in their spare time. Secondly I'm curious as to why they tend to be left leaning...

"Uber Chat -- because that's one thing you didn't know you needed!"

Why doesn't Uber spend less on Engg and pay more to their drivers- which may actually help its business.

If they fired 1000 engineers, at $250k/year each, that would come to about $1.2/week more for each monthly active driver.

Preventing engineers who are working on it from working at the competition?

That's pretty stupid. If this was truly their strategy, they're just raising everyone's costs. They can't out-compete Google at this game.

Google has a chat app?

What's it called this week?