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This is such a non-feature for 99% of users. The fact that Uber devotes engineering resources to serving the tiny 1% slice of users who care about having an ap

This is such a non-feature for 99% of users. The fact that Uber devotes engineering resources to serving the tiny 1% slice of users who care about having an app that works seamlessly across dozens of countries, at the expense of the much larger number of users with limited space on their outdated devices, is really emblematic of the Valley's out-of-whack priorities.

spoonjim 6y ago
That 1% of users represents a lot more than 1% of profit, and engineering an application that is that robust across scenarios has benefits to the stationary users transiting through multiple scenarios as well (surge pricing to normal, credit card to Apple Pay, car ride to scooter ride, etc).
MattGaiser 6y ago
> This is such a non-feature for 99% of users. I would imagine that travellers are an outsized percentage of high spenders, even if they are a small portion of users.
- ChrisKingWebDev 6y ago
  I would agree with this. At home I walk, ride my bike, get on transit, rent a carshare etc. When I'm travelling, I'm walking or calling an Uber/Lyft. I'll take a train or bus only if it's super easy to navigate.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    I spent a lot of 2018/2019 travelling around North America. It was wonderful to never have to consider a taxi.
  - rsj_hn 6y ago
    Same here. In my local area I understand the transit. I have a transit card. But when I am in a foreign city that speaks a different language these are not realistic options unless I spend effort on figuring that out and deal with local municipal transit authorities, which is not the vacation experience I am looking for.
- ljf 6y ago
  Totally this. It isn't uncommon for a whales (usually 1 to 2 percent of an apps users) to account for 30 to 50 percent of their profit. So it is very worth thinking of those customers first. Not all customers are equal. And if you build your app or site without knowing that you may well chase the wrong features.
- StreamBright 6y ago
  As a frequent traveller, I would be much more inclined to either pick the airports that are going to be relevant to me ever or pick the destination airport when I am at the source airport which Uber can easily detect. I am visiting ~10-15 airports most of the time. I would be happy to spend some time to set this up on my phone so i not need to waste a huge amount of space and bandwidth every time that I update Uber. For Uber it would be a win too, reducing the size of the app significantly. Maybe it is only me.
  - bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
    Don’t app updates only push deltas anyway? It’s only the initial install that’s large.
  - Bjartr 6y ago
    A willingness to put in some time up front to tailor a technology experience to yourself is one thing that separates the average HN user from the population at large. For a significant majority of users, if it doesn't work well out of the gate, it's broken.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      Even as an avid Hacker News user, I wouldn't tailor an app download to save bandwidth/space. Both of those are abundant.
ssdspoimdsjvv 6y ago
I don't have any numbers, but I would guess that a good part of Uber's user base consists of people that travel often. Not having to download a new app or update every time you go to a different country is a huge advantage.
NikolaNovak 6y ago
Interesting assumption/perspective - The only people in my circle of friends and co-workers who use Uber, are travelers. And nobody I know has a clue of their phone storage or has hit it due to apps (as opposed to videos/photos). For some, Taxi works well enough and is (perceived as) licensed/trusted/reliable so they don't have a need to use Uber. Others are bit of Luddites, or mistrustful. But I guess friction of Taxi / benefits of Uber just aren't high enough :-/ (Personally, I've only ever used Uber on specific travels; for 99% of my transactions, Taxi has been easier/more reliable. Don't get me wrong, I think Taxi licensing/medalion model is outdated, the drivers have worked incentives, and cars aren't as maintained as well as they could be. But I still normally don't find a benefit in Ubering). Finally, FWIW, even traveling within country, I've noticed significantly different screens/features/options in, say, Ottawa or Toronto airports and vicinity. So I think overall a lot more people benefit from this monolithic model than may be immediately apparent.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I'm in the same boat. To a first approximation, I never use Uber in my local metro area. To a second approximation, I don't use it much traveling either. I'll often grab a cab if it's convenient rather than waiting for an Uber/Lyft to show up. Or if there's a good public transit option to my hotel I'll use that. In spite of (normally) 100+ days of travel per year I maybe use Uber a dozen times a year. (I do use a private car service to take me to the airport, but again Uber wouldn't be very good for that purpose.)
manigandham 6y ago
It's much more complicated than just countries. If you read the linked comment then you'll learn that it's includes many regional customizations, even down to specific cities and airports. An app for travel should absolutely prioritize UX and ease of use as you travel, however far away your destination is.
minhazm 6y ago
It's not even just per country. If you fly to certain airports in certain states they have different rules that affect what the Uber app can do. Do they maintain a separate app for Washington and for New York? It gets pretty messy pretty quickly. Not only do you have to maintain these different edge cases, but you also need to maintain separate applications and all of the problems associated with that like keeping libraries and API's in sync between them.
- corin_ 6y ago
  I'm probably missing something obvious as I'm tired, but why does the Uber app need stuff like specific airport rules stored in it rather than pulled from their servers when needed? Map apps let you look at any city in the world without needing all of that data inside the core app, and if you have enough data to use the Uber app wouldn't you almost certainly also be fine to have it download in the background the required info (coordinates of where pickup is or isn't allowed, specific instructions message to display, etc.) the same as it receives information about local pricing, location of available cars nearby and so on?
  - ameen 6y ago
    Connectivity at airports is not the best - if you’re on an expensive data plan those extra MBs cost a pretty penny which might put off the customer. You need to think about the larger picture.
    - viraptor 6y ago
      Give the streaming of location data for cars in the area, I don't think they care much about those extra MBs. If they did, you'd get a "N cars within X km of you", not a live-ish map. A quick summary like "extra fee for airport pickup: X, pickup location restricted to: Y, etc." should be pretty comparable.
      - plorkyeran 6y ago
        A live map of cars near you takes an incredibly small amount of data. Once you have the map data that'd be easily doable over a dialup connection.
Cederfjard 6y ago
Why are you assuming that splitting it into multiple apps would require less engineering resources than keeping just one?
ryanlol 6y ago
There’s me, a frequent traveller who uses UberLUX 4+ times a day, spending more than 5000GBP/mo. Then there are 100 guys with outdated devices who use UberX once or twice a month to get back home from the pub, probably splitting the ride with their friends. I bring in more money than the latter group of people.
- Marsymars 6y ago
  I’m a bit surprised you have the time for UberLUX. When I find myself with an expense account for Uber I always go for the lowest ETA, which is rarely Uber Premium. You must be hanging out in richer places than me.
  - ryanlol 6y ago
    In central London it’s never much further away than the cheaper options, the cars are actually nice (S-class 90% of the time) unlike in the US.
offtop5 6y ago
Au contraire, people with outdated phones are less likely to be able to afford to Ubers. Much of Uber's profit comes from people booking Ubers from airports, I've used Uber all over the world and it's absolutely amazing.
- diebeforei485 6y ago
  All sorts of people use UberX and Uber Pool, actually. Uber Pool is no longer available due to covid; but hopefully it will come back as vaccination rates go up.

spoonjim 6y ago

That 1% of users represents a lot more than 1% of profit, and engineering an application that is that robust across scenarios has benefits to the stationary users transiting through multiple scenarios as well (surge pricing to normal, credit card to Apple Pay, car ride to scooter ride, etc).

MattGaiser 6y ago

> This is such a non-feature for 99% of users. I would imagine that travellers are an outsized percentage of high spenders, even if they are a small portion of users.

ChrisKingWebDev 6y ago
I would agree with this. At home I walk, ride my bike, get on transit, rent a carshare etc. When I'm travelling, I'm walking or calling an Uber/Lyft. I'll take a train or bus only if it's super easy to navigate.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I spent a lot of 2018/2019 travelling around North America. It was wonderful to never have to consider a taxi.
- rsj_hn 6y ago
  Same here. In my local area I understand the transit. I have a transit card. But when I am in a foreign city that speaks a different language these are not realistic options unless I spend effort on figuring that out and deal with local municipal transit authorities, which is not the vacation experience I am looking for.
ljf 6y ago
Totally this. It isn't uncommon for a whales (usually 1 to 2 percent of an apps users) to account for 30 to 50 percent of their profit. So it is very worth thinking of those customers first. Not all customers are equal. And if you build your app or site without knowing that you may well chase the wrong features.
StreamBright 6y ago
As a frequent traveller, I would be much more inclined to either pick the airports that are going to be relevant to me ever or pick the destination airport when I am at the source airport which Uber can easily detect. I am visiting ~10-15 airports most of the time. I would be happy to spend some time to set this up on my phone so i not need to waste a huge amount of space and bandwidth every time that I update Uber. For Uber it would be a win too, reducing the size of the app significantly. Maybe it is only me.
- bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
  Don’t app updates only push deltas anyway? It’s only the initial install that’s large.
- Bjartr 6y ago
  A willingness to put in some time up front to tailor a technology experience to yourself is one thing that separates the average HN user from the population at large. For a significant majority of users, if it doesn't work well out of the gate, it's broken.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Even as an avid Hacker News user, I wouldn't tailor an app download to save bandwidth/space. Both of those are abundant.

ssdspoimdsjvv 6y ago

I don't have any numbers, but I would guess that a good part of Uber's user base consists of people that travel often. Not having to download a new app or update every time you go to a different country is a huge advantage.

NikolaNovak 6y ago

Interesting assumption/perspective - The only people in my circle of friends and co-workers who use Uber, are travelers. And nobody I know has a clue of their phone storage or has hit it due to apps (as opposed to videos/photos). For some, Taxi works well enough and is (perceived as) licensed/trusted/reliable so they don't have a need to use Uber. Others are bit of Luddites, or mistrustful. But I guess friction of Taxi / benefits of Uber just aren't high enough :-/ (Personally, I've only ever used Uber on specific travels; for 99% of my transactions, Taxi has been easier/more reliable. Don't get me wrong, I think Taxi licensing/medalion model is outdated, the drivers have worked incentives, and cars aren't as maintained as well as they could be. But I still normally don't find a benefit in Ubering). Finally, FWIW, even traveling within country, I've noticed significantly different screens/features/options in, say, Ottawa or Toronto airports and vicinity. So I think overall a lot more people benefit from this monolithic model than may be immediately apparent.

ghaff 6y ago
I'm in the same boat. To a first approximation, I never use Uber in my local metro area. To a second approximation, I don't use it much traveling either. I'll often grab a cab if it's convenient rather than waiting for an Uber/Lyft to show up. Or if there's a good public transit option to my hotel I'll use that. In spite of (normally) 100+ days of travel per year I maybe use Uber a dozen times a year. (I do use a private car service to take me to the airport, but again Uber wouldn't be very good for that purpose.)

manigandham 6y ago

It's much more complicated than just countries. If you read the linked comment then you'll learn that it's includes many regional customizations, even down to specific cities and airports. An app for travel should absolutely prioritize UX and ease of use as you travel, however far away your destination is.

minhazm 6y ago

It's not even just per country. If you fly to certain airports in certain states they have different rules that affect what the Uber app can do. Do they maintain a separate app for Washington and for New York? It gets pretty messy pretty quickly. Not only do you have to maintain these different edge cases, but you also need to maintain separate applications and all of the problems associated with that like keeping libraries and API's in sync between them.

corin_ 6y ago
I'm probably missing something obvious as I'm tired, but why does the Uber app need stuff like specific airport rules stored in it rather than pulled from their servers when needed? Map apps let you look at any city in the world without needing all of that data inside the core app, and if you have enough data to use the Uber app wouldn't you almost certainly also be fine to have it download in the background the required info (coordinates of where pickup is or isn't allowed, specific instructions message to display, etc.) the same as it receives information about local pricing, location of available cars nearby and so on?
- ameen 6y ago
  Connectivity at airports is not the best - if you’re on an expensive data plan those extra MBs cost a pretty penny which might put off the customer. You need to think about the larger picture.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    Give the streaming of location data for cars in the area, I don't think they care much about those extra MBs. If they did, you'd get a "N cars within X km of you", not a live-ish map. A quick summary like "extra fee for airport pickup: X, pickup location restricted to: Y, etc." should be pretty comparable.
    - plorkyeran 6y ago
      A live map of cars near you takes an incredibly small amount of data. Once you have the map data that'd be easily doable over a dialup connection.

Cederfjard 6y ago

Why are you assuming that splitting it into multiple apps would require less engineering resources than keeping just one?

ryanlol 6y ago

There’s me, a frequent traveller who uses UberLUX 4+ times a day, spending more than 5000GBP/mo. Then there are 100 guys with outdated devices who use UberX once or twice a month to get back home from the pub, probably splitting the ride with their friends. I bring in more money than the latter group of people.

Marsymars 6y ago
I’m a bit surprised you have the time for UberLUX. When I find myself with an expense account for Uber I always go for the lowest ETA, which is rarely Uber Premium. You must be hanging out in richer places than me.
- ryanlol 6y ago
  In central London it’s never much further away than the cheaper options, the cars are actually nice (S-class 90% of the time) unlike in the US.

offtop5 6y ago

Au contraire, people with outdated phones are less likely to be able to afford to Ubers. Much of Uber's profit comes from people booking Ubers from airports, I've used Uber all over the world and it's absolutely amazing.

diebeforei485 6y ago
All sorts of people use UberX and Uber Pool, actually. Uber Pool is no longer available due to covid; but hopefully it will come back as vaccination rates go up.