That's a different memory than I have, where it was huge by late 2013. Here's a HN story from mid 2014 where a taxi company discusses adapting by selling medallions (and thus ceding some car's right to street hails) and going more app-based in order to compete with Uber, so yes, low cost Uber rides were huge then.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8134323

We were talking about Sidecar, not Uber. SideCar was not huge at any point in its lifecyle. At one point in 2016/2017 it very briefly had the opportunity to become big, but failed the execution.

We were talking about whether critics are going to go hands-off for a company that does it the "right" way (and grant driver's genuine independence) as Sidecar did, when they have a viable example to point to. As best I can tell, no one distinguished Uber from Sidecar when the latter was a legit rival. Example of a typical article that mentioned the three but said nothing about what made Sidecar's case more defensible.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/01/08/big-liabi...

Raising the question that on-the-job injuries for drivers for the three could bring liability to the platform; no distinction for Sidecar:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/01/06/workers-co...

So yes, I'm skeptical that there's anyone out there who would actually follow through and recognize a driver as a contractor even if they had 100% control of who they accepted that platform really were just a matchmaker.

Edit: If nothing else, I think that shows that SC was significant enough to be talked about alongside Uber.