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What Uber is doing is more similar to predatory pricing (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory-pricing.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predato
by capableweb 3y ago
What Uber is doing is more similar to predatory pricing (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory-pricing.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/predatory-pricing.asp) rather than enshittification. Their plan seems to have always been to survive on VC money to drive out competition, and then raise prices, rather than carefully degrading the platform experience to extract more money per user.
- benjaminwootton 3y agoAs I just mentioned in a peer comment though, did the strategy succeed? It's still as easy as it ever was to find a public taxi in big cities, and Uber never really got a choke hold in the second cities that I'm familiar with. There are also a bunch of competitors waiting in the wings. Brand loyalty and switching costs between all of these are low.
- treis 3y agoA duopoly isn't much better in practice than a monopoly.
- capableweb 3y agoI'm not sure there has been any bigger research done about it, but there are a few anecdotes in this submission about it. Here is one comment as an example: > at least here in India, Uber's service has become downright hostile. Drivers will cancel if the destination isn't to their liking. [...] The worst part is that they've driven out all the existing private cab operators from many airports through their earlier aggressive pricing. So now you literally have no option but to take an Uber from some airports [...] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36955957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36955957
- vintagedave 3y agoCory Doctorow, who coined the term 'enshittification', also wrote about predatory pricing just this May: https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/... The article mentions Uber too.