Sure. Uber definitely did better taxi dispatch. But if Kalanick had kept working on Red Swoosh, does anybody really believe taxi dispatch today would be just like it was in 2005?

I'd say no. The cab industry was already tracking vehicle GPS circa 2005: http://www.taxi-library.org/mccurdy.htm

Google Maps Android launched in 2008. It doesn't take a genius to say, "What if..." And people did. Like this 2010 paper about experiments with Java apps to do taxi dispatch in Singapore: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dddc/21e65523932240164d2bb4...

So people are giving Uber credit for something that would have happened anyhow. And they're doing that because Kalanick was the one most willing to burn money and break laws, not because he was such a creative genius.