Idk what taxi's you used but outside of a handful of cities, getting a taxi was terrible. Even when I lived in Chicago I had to call the dispatch, who would give me a 10-15 minute wide estimate of their arrival time, and often idled at a random spot in my building and I would have to walk back and forth across the complex to find it.

Uber and Lyft are insanely better than that.

Yeah, I recall calling up asking for a ride in Chicago. It'd be someone who spoke very unclearly on the phone, "You want a pickup for 6am going to the airport? Okay" and hangs up. So...did you get that? Did you schedule it? Email confirmation? It was not great service.

I lived in Chicago for over 15 years and never had a problem getting a taxi. Plus it had the added bonus of up-front flat rates, a professional driver that knew what the hell they were doing, proper commercial driver insurance and not having to let some app harvest all my personal information and track me where ever I went.

Counter point. I've been 'scammed' by a taxi multiple times over living there 6 years, usually around new years or any big event. Things like circling the block to run up the fair, missing exits and feigning ignorance, and of course their card machine is ALWAYS down?

Imagine being a tourist in a new medium to small city and having to deal with the local taxi company. Sure you're gonna get an ok experience at some, even most, but a good portion are going to suck ass and often have no recourse. With uber/lyft I have a GPS-backed history of my route and metrics down to wait time to use as evidence and I've been refunded with no question.

Imagine trying to do that with a taxi driver, yelling at each other in a cab at 2 am, calling the taxi company who will tell u to fuck off, or calling the city and filing a case that is pending for 4 months.

I moved into an economically depressed area and let me tell you: it was hit and miss taking taxis. It didn't matter if I called dispatch repeatedly or booked ahead of time even with the more expensive car service, I could never count on a taxi to show despite the fact I was very clear about this being a coveted airport ride. Nobody wanted to pick up a fare at 4 AM in the ghetto and I nearly missed my plane more than once.

I eventually punted and had my wife drive me to the closest hotel with a cab stand. But that meant she had to get up and drive me around at 4 AM just because the cab company was unreliable.

Now with Uber not only is the car there within minutes but the charge against my corporate card is automatically sent to my corporate expense system. So no from my perspective Uber is far better! And this is despite the uber app wanting to spy on users between and after use. But that's what location permissions are for. Or just uninstalling the app entirely when not in use.

A billion rides a day in almost every single country in the world.

And losing money with every one of them!

I dont think uber is very useful outside the US

My wife's family lives in a slum in Caloocan City in the Philippines. When we stayed with them for a visit, it was amazing that I could just pull up my Uber app and get a ride to BGC, which took 1 1/2 hours. There is no other way I could have pulled this off otherwise. It was also amazing it only cost $8.

I mean, it's been very useful while travelling in countries where taxi drivers rip you off after the ride, and I don't speak the local language.

Only HN's can think their opinion is worth more than millions of people spending and earning money in more than 50 countries.

Uber has little traction in Europe for example. It seems to be a huge deal in the US though

https://www.forbes.com/sites/samshead/2019/05/10/ubers-rocky...

Uber has significant traction in Europe, thats why they got banned from several places, and Taxi cabs drivers have attacked people and set cars and places on fire.

Nevertheless globally it triumphed.