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Re:Uber starts same-day grocery delivery service in US by pkteison on Wednesday August 20, 2014 @03:25PM (#8204063)
I assume the idea is to give their drivers something useful to do with downtime. If all drivers could be closer to 100% utilized by taking a delivery when there are no passengers, they could have more drivers and happier/wealthier drivers.

Similar to AWS, really. Originally the AWS idea was that Amazon needed those extra servers and a way to manage them anyway, might as well do something valuable with the excess capacity.

Re:Uber starts same-day grocery delivery service in US by ereckers on Wednesday August 20, 2014 @04:15PM (#8204326)
I can see that thought process. However, I think there's a big difference between racks of servers and racks of people. People skip work, crash into things, ask for raises, unionize, sleep in, etc.. I don't know much about commoditizing things, but I'd much rather invest in a warehouse full of machines, then a low wage and potentially uninspired human workforce.