3 ms·
The advantages of scale are massive. More drivers = faster rides. More riders = more trips. It's a pretty classic natural monopoly. Like Ebay.
by pbreit 11y ago
The advantages of scale are massive. More drivers = faster rides. More riders = more trips. It's a pretty classic natural monopoly. Like Ebay.
- kasey_junk 11y agoBut nothing prevents drivers from working multiple networks nor riders switching. It's literally a web gui ready to be written.
- joshfraser 11y agoIt has been: http://www.whatsthefare.com/ http://www.whatsthefare.com/
- Spivak 11y agoSure, but let's say you as a consumer don't actually care about the brand of the ride platform and just want to get to your destination for some weight of speed and cost. Then it doesn't matter if there's only Uber or if there are 50 private taxi services in your area. Once someone fills gap with a meta-privte-ride service that just locates the closest and cheapest provider it's trivial for someone like Uber to be undercut by a local competitor.
- zanny 11y agoHow are you going to make a meta-ridesharing service? The only way to tell what Uber or Lyft drivers are available is through their apps, and it seems like it would be against their interests to do anything than make their communications as proprietary as possible. If you prevent users from weighing options you are better able to capture users exclusively.
- pbreit 11y agoYou're throwing around the word "trivial" pretty carelessly. "the closest and cheapest" is Uber. "let's say you as a consumer don't actually care about the brand" is a big, mostly wrong assumption.
- lsc 11y ago>Once someone fills gap with a meta-privte-ride service that just locates the closest and cheapest provider Yup. If you want to find me legal cover, I've got a guy who's good at reverse engineering shit. Let's do this thing.
- prostoalex 11y agoMost drivers work for multiple networks though. If Uber or Lyft want to keep them in independent contractor status, it will remain that way.