I thought it was kind of funny that the author said Taxi companies are only one app away from feature parity with Uber. That is a pretty important feature that they aren't likely to develop quickly if they haven't been bothered to do it already. Not a fan of uber, but the taxi experience is pretty unreliable and bad and will get worse if uber fails and taxis have another monopoly.

Much has been written about this already, but taxi companies are controlling access to a limited resource (taxi medallions), so the economics are slightly different. Uber sidestepped medallions by ignoring all existing laws at the beginning, and used investor billions to undercut taxi companies on price, but investor billions eventually run out.

The medallion system, good and bad, is how taxi companies have made things work in the past, and probably the future.

Taxi company is a taxi company. They dont need fancy tech only cabs, drivers, mechanics and minimal HR/PR.

Uber must have huge overhead in HR/PR/Legal. They are trying to win the whole capitalism, and at that scale costs a lot.