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Getting a taxi in my college town in 2005 was agony. Make a phone call from a loud bar and shout at some guy who can barely tell what you're saying that you wan

Getting a taxi in my college town in 2005 was agony. Make a phone call from a loud bar and shout at some guy who can barely tell what you're saying that you want a taxi and then maybe if you're lucky they show up in an hour and cost 3 times as much as you expected (and that's on a good night!) vs. "press a button, get a ride" (and have a feedback mechanism for horrible drivers or gross cars, etc.). Uber has issues but honestly it's night and day compared to what taxis were like. And they decrease DUI's.

mpweiher 2y ago
In my city of Berlin, we simply had an app called MyTaxi that would hail the cab for you. No need for Uber and its predatory business model.
Terr_ 2y ago
Sure, but there's a difference between "that kind of success" and "any success". To illustrate, imagine an alternate timeline with a company called "Rebu", which provides all the same phone-apps and servers and whatnot for thousands of taxi-services across the world to adopt, replacing their shitty old "computerized dispatch" systems. Do you believe Rebu could that have managed to draw the same level of venture-capitalist money and unicorn-ness and hype, even sharing the same core technologies, code, and product features? I don't think it would, and I'm asserting that comes from business-plans, labor relations, legal challenges, government lobbying, investor marketing, etc., which in several cases have been, er, ethically-problematic.
- tristor 2y ago
  You're right, but you're treating that as a net-negative. The reality is that the government regulations structured taxi services in most cities in the world into cartels that operated in a way that was to the detriment of their customers. Uber broke the taxi cartel, and yes, it broke the law to do it, but it wouldn't have been possible to do this way if they'd tried to work with the existing taxi companies, because their anti-customer cancer would have infected Uber while it was young and before it could even scale. Part of their value proposition is their scale, itself.
  - deltarholamda 2y ago
    Services like Uber and AirBnB have also introduced a concept through technology that was previously almost unheard of in the private sector: a nationwide blacklist. Bob Smith annoyed enough Uber drivers in Milwaukee that now he can't get a ride in Poughkeepsie. Maybe that's valid, maybe it's not. But it is pretty new, and I doubt it was in the slide deck when Uber hit up the VCs. The social aspect of these sorts of things can't help but get entangled with the politics of social mores. Maybe Bob was giving the Uber drivers wet willies. A lot of people would think he caught that ban fairly. Maybe Bob was too politically incorrect for the Uber drivers. Not quite so sure he deserves to be sentenced to hoof it until the Sun burns out. How do we know the bans are of the fair former and not the latter? We don't. It's a private company, they can be as opaque about this as they want. Good, bad, who knows, but it certainly makes for a completely different landscape.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      I agree that this sort of thing is a problem, but it's not a fundamental problem with the existence of these services. It's just a problem to be solved, perhaps through legislation on how suspensions and bans are allowed to work, and how people ought to be able to appeal them. The legacy taxi services had this problem too, though, as you note, not on a global level. Pre-Uber, there was one taxi service that stopped taking my calls. I have no idea why. I had no way to appeal this, or to even get in touch with them to find out what was going on. In the meantime, Bob still probably has public transit or local old-school taxi services to fall back on (which somehow still exist). Many areas even have local ride-hailing apps. Worst-case, Bob will have to rent a car when visiting other cities.
      - deltarholamda 2y ago
        >I agree that this sort of thing is a problem, but it's not a fundamental problem with the existence of these services. Well, it kinda is a fundamental problem, with regard to the original article's premise that scale is a problem. These services can't operate on VC's terms without scaling up to a national or global level. And this, by its nature, means your Uber problem in California follows you to Georgia, and possibly to Uzbekistan. What if Uber shares its ban list with Toasttab? Or if Uber buys Toasttab? Laws may be able to address this, but laws always lag. Sometimes by a lot.
- kelnos 2y ago
  I think you're missing a key bit: taxi companies weren't interested in this sort of thing. In most municipalities, taxi service was a protected, government-granted monopoly. The reason taxi service was always so bad was because there was no competition, and no incentive to improve. So why would they bother to adopt "Rebu"? It's nothing but downsides: their taxi drivers have to work harder, have to be more polite and drive more safely, have to have cleaner cars, and have to be more accountable in general. Not to mention of course Rebu is going to take a cut of all rides booked on their platform. There was no way to make regular taxi service better without structural and legal reform that the incumbents did not want. The only way to fix it was to go outside the system and do something sketchy. And it worked! For all their issues and controversies, the ride-hailing app experience is amazing, especially when compared to old-school taxi service. Some legacy taxi services have stepped up and improved a bunch since then, and others have just faded into obscurity.
  - taberiand 2y ago
    I think the difference between the hypothetical Rebu and Uber is one wants to fix the system, and one wants to be the system. The Taxis had to be disrupted, but Uber doesn't flinch at being just as bad wherever they can get away with it
  - camgunz 2y ago
    I think we're doing a lot of work to get into the mind of cab companies, but along those lines: they weren't interested because the market isn't really that large. Uber is barely profitable now after raising rates tremendously and aggressively fighting any kinds of workers rights initiative. That means two things. First, people don't think a typical ride is worth very much, and second, people don't really have that many places to go. The destination list is 90% work, the airport, and nightlife. These are not the underpinnings of a multibillion dollar business... unless you invent self-driving cars or achieve a good old fashioned monopoly (a lot of the reason many cab companies went out of business as you say is that Uber failed to invent self-driving cars). But overall this was pretty bad investment for humanity. Let's just stipulate it's a lot easier to get a ride at a reasonable price and that's a good thing (not a given considering increased traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, plus decreased pressure for cities to move away from car-dependency). Was it worth multiple billions of dollars and software engineering hours? Like, assuredly not. It's a big "LOL" drawn in lipstick on a portrait of the efficient market hypothesis. It turns out the private sector is also great at just setting huge piles of cash on fire.
- arthurjj 2y ago
  I'm confused to the argument you're making as some of those are clearly ethically-problematic for Uber while legal challenges, government lobbying seems core to the business. The taxi market, in the US at least, was a textbook case of regulatory capture to stifle competition. Google "taxi medallion prices nyc" for an example. Uber was clearly the 'good guy' in flouting those laws and later getting them repealed. The cartels that controlled the medallions had no interest in improving the technology until they had competition.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Then why was uber a thing in other cities around the country where such laws didn't exist?
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      Because it also had massively better UX than any previous taxi journey. Order from phone; price up front; pay in app; know the licence, make and model of the car coming to get you; see where the car is on the way; travel in any city (except, say, Oxford, UK, unfortunately). All new features for taxi use.
  - _DeadFred_ 2y ago
    Haha. Thanks I needed a laugh. 'Uber clearly the good guy' haha. I too remember a simpler time when we were all so naive.
- anamax 2y ago
  We don't have to imagine - Flywheel was that company. It got reasonable funding but couldn't get taxi companies to sign up. Things got a bit better when it became clear that Uber was going to kill taxi companies but too little, too late.
- LarsDu88 2y ago
  The takeaway here is that rather than invent some high tech wacky thing, just target some existing cartels/government monopolies. Hotels (AirBnB), telecommunications (Facebook versus AT&T Bell), taxi services (uber/lyft), broadcast television (netflix), radio (spotify), and spaceflight/rocketry (SpaceX) come to mind as successes. What else is there? - Boeing - Just need to invent a better commercial passenger airplane - Lockheed - The day of 150 million dollar manned fighter jets is coming to an end. - Electricity distribution - PG&E or Southern California Edison. Only way to crack this is with decentralized power distribution and batteries - Waste Management - Trash collection, recycling, and processing - DeBeers Diamonds - Diamonds can basically be synthesized in the lab at will now.
arccy 2y ago
this is still the experience in less developed places like italy
- macro-b 2y ago
  It’s more about regulations rather than development. It’s forbidden here, so taxi drivers can still make a good living rather than subsidizing a billion dollar company
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
It's a better experience for sure, and that's why they got the viral start that gave them the opportunity to eat the world, but presenting that as "worth it" seems pretty dubious considering: - Tons and tons of users buying vehicles they can barely afford to drive for them - Tons of restaurants already struggling to get by saddled with needing an iPad or two at their counter to intercept online orders, and needing to charge more and anger customers just to break even on the fees - Huge amounts of sexual assaults because Uber didn't vet drivers And lest we leave it merely implied: Uber is worth what Uber is worth because it's a taxi company that owns no Taxis and pays no taxi drivers a proper wage. That's why it's a billion dollar unicorn. Same as AirBNB is a hotel chain that owns no hotels, UberEats/Doordash are food delivery services that don't own restaurants, Instacart is a grocery chain that doesn't own grocery stores. Honestly if you want to really be cynical about it, the true path to finding the next tech unicorn is figuring out how to be a $business that owns none of what a $business normally does, and hires no employees that $business usually does, and then wrap that up in an app, and convince poor people to do the work for you because they have no other options. Boom, unicorn. The way taxi companies had languished in obsolescence was definitely a problem, but I struggle to consider if Uber was the best way to solve that on any front.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  Lots has been written about how way too much contemporary US business is about value extraction not value creation. Put differently, a common business model in late 20th century and early 21st century US capitalism is to find a transaction that is already happening "at scale" and figure out how to insert your own company into the transaction and extract some percentage of the value. The primary way of accomplishing this is to create a (new) story to tell about the value you claim you are adding to the transaction ("it's so easy", "we have an app for that", "so much quicker") even though in many cases nobody (or very few people) were asking for whatever you bring to it. This does not mean that there is no value added. What these companies do not represent are new transactions: no new products, no new macro-scale services ("but you get a car with your phone now!" still boils down to "someone will drive you where you want to go").
  - 2y ago
Tor3 2y ago
For what it's worth, around here you call an ordinary taxi exactly the same way: Press a button, get a ride. Been like that for a long time.
- ta1243 2y ago
  With their specific app? In the last 2 weeks I've used the Uber app in Washington, New York, Miami and Stoke (UK). One app, 4 cities, 2 continents.
  - Tor3 2y ago
    The app covers all the various taxi companies around here. It's not international.
    - ta1243 2y ago
      That's one problem. I typically need a taxi when I'm in a remote city a long way form home. Uber gives me a common app that works from Sydney to San Francisco. I'm not going to land in Chicago and work out which of the myriad of apps I need to get. Now if it was instead a website, sure, much easier. No need to create accounts etc, just visit "chicagotaxi.com", perhaps shown on a sign at the airport/station/etc, then book and pay with applepay/googlepay. But installing some application, signing up, having my data stolen, all to be told "no taxis available", is the reality of a local app.
      - Tor3 2y ago
        How is the situation with Uber and insurance these days? I remember from years back that Uber drivers didn't have the insurance that taxi drivers need (though that may vary by country). As one who has actually experienced a car crash involving a taxi (I was in the taxi, but fortunately on the left side in the back seat when another car crashed into its right side), I have a keen interest in insurance..
        ta1243 2y ago
hotspot_one 2y ago
Your view comes up every time. Basically you are claiming "Taxis sucked, so it was ok that Uber broke a lot of laws and social conventions to make the situation better". And who knows, your view might be right.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Ultimately it will be better, because a temporary wrong is nowhere near as big as the ongoing, forever-accumulating better experience people have now. The only exception to that is that they should've background-checked drivers first.
- NoGravitas 2y ago
  "Taxis are terrible" and "Uber is basically an illegal taxi company" can both be true things.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Uber's goal from the start has always been to replace human taxis altogether with robotaxis. This is just phase 1 (put most taxi companies out of business).
tomjakubowski 2y ago
Before Uber was available in Orange County, circa 2010-2011, I used an iPhone app to call a yellow cab to pick me up without having speaking to a dispatcher. I was able to give feedback about the driver too. Uber-style apps to hail cabs did exist, maybe they just weren't rolled out to all markets. Before the launch of UberX, the Uber app positioned itself as a convenient way to call a black car/limo and, for drivers, to get some extra business between their "regular" calls. It was a semi-luxury though it only cost a bit more than a yellow cab (I only ever used Uber pre-UberX to get to/from the airport). Really, other than surge pricing, I don't think Uber innovated very much on the tech side. Their success in disrupting cabs was rather down to flooding the market with supply, oftentimes in ways that flouted the law.

mpweiher 2y ago

In my city of Berlin, we simply had an app called MyTaxi that would hail the cab for you. No need for Uber and its predatory business model.

Terr_ 2y ago

Sure, but there's a difference between "that kind of success" and "any success". To illustrate, imagine an alternate timeline with a company called "Rebu", which provides all the same phone-apps and servers and whatnot for thousands of taxi-services across the world to adopt, replacing their shitty old "computerized dispatch" systems. Do you believe Rebu could that have managed to draw the same level of venture-capitalist money and unicorn-ness and hype, even sharing the same core technologies, code, and product features? I don't think it would, and I'm asserting that comes from business-plans, labor relations, legal challenges, government lobbying, investor marketing, etc., which in several cases have been, er, ethically-problematic.

tristor 2y ago
You're right, but you're treating that as a net-negative. The reality is that the government regulations structured taxi services in most cities in the world into cartels that operated in a way that was to the detriment of their customers. Uber broke the taxi cartel, and yes, it broke the law to do it, but it wouldn't have been possible to do this way if they'd tried to work with the existing taxi companies, because their anti-customer cancer would have infected Uber while it was young and before it could even scale. Part of their value proposition is their scale, itself.
- deltarholamda 2y ago
  Services like Uber and AirBnB have also introduced a concept through technology that was previously almost unheard of in the private sector: a nationwide blacklist. Bob Smith annoyed enough Uber drivers in Milwaukee that now he can't get a ride in Poughkeepsie. Maybe that's valid, maybe it's not. But it is pretty new, and I doubt it was in the slide deck when Uber hit up the VCs. The social aspect of these sorts of things can't help but get entangled with the politics of social mores. Maybe Bob was giving the Uber drivers wet willies. A lot of people would think he caught that ban fairly. Maybe Bob was too politically incorrect for the Uber drivers. Not quite so sure he deserves to be sentenced to hoof it until the Sun burns out. How do we know the bans are of the fair former and not the latter? We don't. It's a private company, they can be as opaque about this as they want. Good, bad, who knows, but it certainly makes for a completely different landscape.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    I agree that this sort of thing is a problem, but it's not a fundamental problem with the existence of these services. It's just a problem to be solved, perhaps through legislation on how suspensions and bans are allowed to work, and how people ought to be able to appeal them. The legacy taxi services had this problem too, though, as you note, not on a global level. Pre-Uber, there was one taxi service that stopped taking my calls. I have no idea why. I had no way to appeal this, or to even get in touch with them to find out what was going on. In the meantime, Bob still probably has public transit or local old-school taxi services to fall back on (which somehow still exist). Many areas even have local ride-hailing apps. Worst-case, Bob will have to rent a car when visiting other cities.
    - deltarholamda 2y ago
      >I agree that this sort of thing is a problem, but it's not a fundamental problem with the existence of these services. Well, it kinda is a fundamental problem, with regard to the original article's premise that scale is a problem. These services can't operate on VC's terms without scaling up to a national or global level. And this, by its nature, means your Uber problem in California follows you to Georgia, and possibly to Uzbekistan. What if Uber shares its ban list with Toasttab? Or if Uber buys Toasttab? Laws may be able to address this, but laws always lag. Sometimes by a lot.
kelnos 2y ago
I think you're missing a key bit: taxi companies weren't interested in this sort of thing. In most municipalities, taxi service was a protected, government-granted monopoly. The reason taxi service was always so bad was because there was no competition, and no incentive to improve. So why would they bother to adopt "Rebu"? It's nothing but downsides: their taxi drivers have to work harder, have to be more polite and drive more safely, have to have cleaner cars, and have to be more accountable in general. Not to mention of course Rebu is going to take a cut of all rides booked on their platform. There was no way to make regular taxi service better without structural and legal reform that the incumbents did not want. The only way to fix it was to go outside the system and do something sketchy. And it worked! For all their issues and controversies, the ride-hailing app experience is amazing, especially when compared to old-school taxi service. Some legacy taxi services have stepped up and improved a bunch since then, and others have just faded into obscurity.
- taberiand 2y ago
  I think the difference between the hypothetical Rebu and Uber is one wants to fix the system, and one wants to be the system. The Taxis had to be disrupted, but Uber doesn't flinch at being just as bad wherever they can get away with it
- camgunz 2y ago
  I think we're doing a lot of work to get into the mind of cab companies, but along those lines: they weren't interested because the market isn't really that large. Uber is barely profitable now after raising rates tremendously and aggressively fighting any kinds of workers rights initiative. That means two things. First, people don't think a typical ride is worth very much, and second, people don't really have that many places to go. The destination list is 90% work, the airport, and nightlife. These are not the underpinnings of a multibillion dollar business... unless you invent self-driving cars or achieve a good old fashioned monopoly (a lot of the reason many cab companies went out of business as you say is that Uber failed to invent self-driving cars). But overall this was pretty bad investment for humanity. Let's just stipulate it's a lot easier to get a ride at a reasonable price and that's a good thing (not a given considering increased traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, plus decreased pressure for cities to move away from car-dependency). Was it worth multiple billions of dollars and software engineering hours? Like, assuredly not. It's a big "LOL" drawn in lipstick on a portrait of the efficient market hypothesis. It turns out the private sector is also great at just setting huge piles of cash on fire.
arthurjj 2y ago
I'm confused to the argument you're making as some of those are clearly ethically-problematic for Uber while legal challenges, government lobbying seems core to the business. The taxi market, in the US at least, was a textbook case of regulatory capture to stifle competition. Google "taxi medallion prices nyc" for an example. Uber was clearly the 'good guy' in flouting those laws and later getting them repealed. The cartels that controlled the medallions had no interest in improving the technology until they had competition.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Then why was uber a thing in other cities around the country where such laws didn't exist?
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Because it also had massively better UX than any previous taxi journey. Order from phone; price up front; pay in app; know the licence, make and model of the car coming to get you; see where the car is on the way; travel in any city (except, say, Oxford, UK, unfortunately). All new features for taxi use.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  Haha. Thanks I needed a laugh. 'Uber clearly the good guy' haha. I too remember a simpler time when we were all so naive.
anamax 2y ago
We don't have to imagine - Flywheel was that company. It got reasonable funding but couldn't get taxi companies to sign up. Things got a bit better when it became clear that Uber was going to kill taxi companies but too little, too late.
LarsDu88 2y ago
The takeaway here is that rather than invent some high tech wacky thing, just target some existing cartels/government monopolies. Hotels (AirBnB), telecommunications (Facebook versus AT&T Bell), taxi services (uber/lyft), broadcast television (netflix), radio (spotify), and spaceflight/rocketry (SpaceX) come to mind as successes. What else is there? - Boeing - Just need to invent a better commercial passenger airplane - Lockheed - The day of 150 million dollar manned fighter jets is coming to an end. - Electricity distribution - PG&E or Southern California Edison. Only way to crack this is with decentralized power distribution and batteries - Waste Management - Trash collection, recycling, and processing - DeBeers Diamonds - Diamonds can basically be synthesized in the lab at will now.

arccy 2y ago

this is still the experience in less developed places like italy

macro-b 2y ago
It’s more about regulations rather than development. It’s forbidden here, so taxi drivers can still make a good living rather than subsidizing a billion dollar company

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

It's a better experience for sure, and that's why they got the viral start that gave them the opportunity to eat the world, but presenting that as "worth it" seems pretty dubious considering: - Tons and tons of users buying vehicles they can barely afford to drive for them - Tons of restaurants already struggling to get by saddled with needing an iPad or two at their counter to intercept online orders, and needing to charge more and anger customers just to break even on the fees - Huge amounts of sexual assaults because Uber didn't vet drivers And lest we leave it merely implied: Uber is worth what Uber is worth because it's a taxi company that owns no Taxis and pays no taxi drivers a proper wage. That's why it's a billion dollar unicorn. Same as AirBNB is a hotel chain that owns no hotels, UberEats/Doordash are food delivery services that don't own restaurants, Instacart is a grocery chain that doesn't own grocery stores. Honestly if you want to really be cynical about it, the true path to finding the next tech unicorn is figuring out how to be a $business that owns none of what a $business normally does, and hires no employees that $business usually does, and then wrap that up in an app, and convince poor people to do the work for you because they have no other options. Boom, unicorn. The way taxi companies had languished in obsolescence was definitely a problem, but I struggle to consider if Uber was the best way to solve that on any front.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
Lots has been written about how way too much contemporary US business is about value extraction not value creation. Put differently, a common business model in late 20th century and early 21st century US capitalism is to find a transaction that is already happening "at scale" and figure out how to insert your own company into the transaction and extract some percentage of the value. The primary way of accomplishing this is to create a (new) story to tell about the value you claim you are adding to the transaction ("it's so easy", "we have an app for that", "so much quicker") even though in many cases nobody (or very few people) were asking for whatever you bring to it. This does not mean that there is no value added. What these companies do not represent are new transactions: no new products, no new macro-scale services ("but you get a car with your phone now!" still boils down to "someone will drive you where you want to go").
- 2y ago

Tor3 2y ago

For what it's worth, around here you call an ordinary taxi exactly the same way: Press a button, get a ride. Been like that for a long time.

ta1243 2y ago
With their specific app? In the last 2 weeks I've used the Uber app in Washington, New York, Miami and Stoke (UK). One app, 4 cities, 2 continents.
- Tor3 2y ago
  The app covers all the various taxi companies around here. It's not international.
  - ta1243 2y ago
    That's one problem. I typically need a taxi when I'm in a remote city a long way form home. Uber gives me a common app that works from Sydney to San Francisco. I'm not going to land in Chicago and work out which of the myriad of apps I need to get. Now if it was instead a website, sure, much easier. No need to create accounts etc, just visit "chicagotaxi.com", perhaps shown on a sign at the airport/station/etc, then book and pay with applepay/googlepay. But installing some application, signing up, having my data stolen, all to be told "no taxis available", is the reality of a local app.
    - Tor3 2y ago
      How is the situation with Uber and insurance these days? I remember from years back that Uber drivers didn't have the insurance that taxi drivers need (though that may vary by country). As one who has actually experienced a car crash involving a taxi (I was in the taxi, but fortunately on the left side in the back seat when another car crashed into its right side), I have a keen interest in insurance..
      - ta1243 2y ago

hotspot_one 2y ago

Your view comes up every time. Basically you are claiming "Taxis sucked, so it was ok that Uber broke a lot of laws and social conventions to make the situation better". And who knows, your view might be right.

robertlagrant 2y ago
Ultimately it will be better, because a temporary wrong is nowhere near as big as the ongoing, forever-accumulating better experience people have now. The only exception to that is that they should've background-checked drivers first.
NoGravitas 2y ago
"Taxis are terrible" and "Uber is basically an illegal taxi company" can both be true things.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

Uber's goal from the start has always been to replace human taxis altogether with robotaxis. This is just phase 1 (put most taxi companies out of business).

tomjakubowski 2y ago

Before Uber was available in Orange County, circa 2010-2011, I used an iPhone app to call a yellow cab to pick me up without having speaking to a dispatcher. I was able to give feedback about the driver too. Uber-style apps to hail cabs did exist, maybe they just weren't rolled out to all markets. Before the launch of UberX, the Uber app positioned itself as a convenient way to call a black car/limo and, for drivers, to get some extra business between their "regular" calls. It was a semi-luxury though it only cost a bit more than a yellow cab (I only ever used Uber pre-UberX to get to/from the airport). Really, other than surge pricing, I don't think Uber innovated very much on the tech side. Their success in disrupting cabs was rather down to flooding the market with supply, oftentimes in ways that flouted the law.