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Does Uber have a patent moat or is their moat the brand? For as much hate as they receive, I'm not sure why a driver-owned cooperative app has not emerged that

Does Uber have a patent moat or is their moat the brand? For as much hate as they receive, I'm not sure why a driver-owned cooperative app has not emerged that takes no profit. Is there something like this we should all start using instead? There isn't much technological innovation in ride-sharing that the FOSS community couldn't solve. I'd love to work in this area.

jnsie 1y ago
A decentralized Uber is an interesting thought experiment. I imagine the processing power required is a big barrier to entry for the FOSS community.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  Processing power? I don't think there is much processing power needed. Like, you only need to ping drivers in your vincinity.
  - lurking_swe 1y ago
    Uber offers a lot more than just locating a driver. It’s a platform that generates a recommended route for the driver, shows the progress of the route to the customer in realtime so they know the driver is going the right direction, it calculates fares (e.g. distance, surge pricing, etc), and has other features like “share my ride details with my spouse” for example…for security purposes. That’s just what i could think of off the top of my head and i’m not a product manager at uber. Things are NEVER as simple as they initially seem. Other thoughts: - at uber’s scale, payment processing alone likely takes up quite a bit of compute server side. You could outsource this to a 3rd party, but it’s still an expense as you scale. - how would a decentralized system work if something goes wrong during the ride? who does the customer call? Drunk driver, attempted rape, etc. list of things that can go wrong is long. - your platform/app would need to be smart enough to know where all the “proper” ride share pickup spots are at every airport. Not trivial! - how would you offer a feature to “reserve a ride” like uber does, if you only build an app that can find “nearby drivers”? food for thought. :) All im pointing out is this kind of product needs to be a platform and is likely not cheap to run. It’s not 90% client side. Unless you literally just want to reinvent the taxi concept, in which case maybe the 90% client side approach is feasible.
GCUMstlyHarmls 1y ago
Is driver verification a hard thing here? Or simple to solve with a web of trust, assuming you could seed it with enough good actors? I think Uber verifies driver quality/qualifications and vehicle roadworthy-ness?
- id00 1y ago
  It's actually not that easy, especially at scale. Background checks cost money/time + compliance requirements are vastly different between regions/states/cities. And there are tons of government systems you need to get data from. And some counties require in-person visit to obtain court records. And you need those records to make valid assessments.
mongol 1y ago
There are such apps. In Sweden there is Fair, but from what I can gather it uses an app produced by ATOM Mobility, so I take it they use a ready-made platform. Check it out.
williamdclt 1y ago
> driver-owned cooperative app that takes no profit FWIW, the oversight of Uber on drivers is part of the success of Uber. I'm not talking about their mistreatments of drivers, but the fact that as a consumer I have reasonable confidence that the driver has been doing a decent job so far and that if I have a problem with the driver, there'd be some consequences through Uber. It's part of what allowed their success: from unaccountable taxi mafias to a service consumers can trust. It's far from perfect of course but it's good enough that I'm confident enough using Uber (although I avoid it for other reasons) even in foreign countries. It's probably not impossible to achieve with a co-op, but it seems more difficult
- jajko 1y ago
  > From unaccountable taxi mafias This is my biggest problem with taxi service in the past. Unless they behave criminally towards you and you can go to police, you were at their mercy. Any cost had to be accepted, no idea how much it would cost upfront. There were whole scam rings around that in some parts of Europe, taking foreign customers via very elongated roads to destination. Or a story from a colleague - taxi driver in Paris literally threw out a customer in the middle of highway since he didn't like his personal political views on famous french protests. In normal situation that would mean the taxi guy losing his 200k euro medallion, in reality of course nothing, zilch, nada.
- ellenhp 1y ago
  I've been treated to the the "you're so beautiful, do you have a boyfriend" act about 2% of the time[0] I get into a stranger's car pretty much across the board, which makes me a little bit skeptical about whether these companies do meaningful oversight. It's possible that these incidents go mostly unreported though. I didn't report mine. As an aside, this is why I generally trust public transit more whenever it's an option. The worst case scenario is just so much less sinister when there are other people around than it is in a car alone with a stranger. [0] once in a lyft in seattle, the other in a taxicab in barcelona. figuring I've taken about 100 lifetime solo car rides with strangers which is probably an overestimate.
  - 1y ago
bad_haircut72 1y ago
Yes their moat is the brand, drunk women will get in an Uber and feel safe because corporate is ultimately putting their name on the line every ride. Nobody will feel safe dealing directly with random strangers.
- notyourwork 1y ago
  > Nobody will feel safe dealing directly with random strangers. Let me tell you about taxi cabs.
  - kortilla 1y ago
    This is part of why taxi cabs got maybe 1% of the ridership across the US of what uber/lyft get. Everyone hated taxis because they were so unreliable and unaccountable for scamming you outside of a few dense cities like NY.
    - Retric 1y ago
      Some searching suggests it’s not that far from 50:50 in terms of actual rides. Uber drivers average well under 20 hours per week. Taxi have significantly fewer drivers working much longer hours, but they dominate very short trips.
      - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
        Makes sense to me. There is a lot of existing infrastructure anticipating cab companies. Airports, stadiums, hotels, resorts, etc. all with dedicated cab lines that can get you seated in a vehicle in seconds.
  - AnotherGoodName 1y ago
    The ride apps solve the biggest concerns. They have driver ratings so you can see verification from many other riders that the driver is good and they have upfront pricing. Taxi's have started to use apps but at this point the trust is pretty much broken to anyone that's experienced the old "My meters not working but I'll give you a special rate" type of shit. Essentially Taxi drivers are the random strangers over the apps with ratings and reviews from other riders showing clearly.
tayo42 1y ago
> the FOSS community couldn't solve My guess is the real difficult part is maintenance and server costs. It's probably pretty expensive to run And plenty of competitors have popped up. Any time you travel outside of the US you need to use the local app. Didi, gojek, grab
GIVEDADDYABYTE 1y ago
In Washington DC we have Empower https://driveempower.com/ https://driveempower.com/ The idea is that drivers pay a flat fee per month and get to keep the entirety of the fare. I used it for a while but my desire to get somewhere fast outweighed my disdain for Uber as middleman. Eventually I went back to Uber/Lyft due to long wait times and unreliable pickups. It is a lot more like "some guy giving you a ride" instead of a car service. My buddy initially pitched it to me as a cheap alternative to Uber for drivers that were banned from Uber. It is nice that they don't have surge pricing. Empower is somewhere in between the convenience and price of Uber and public transportation.
- porridgeraisin 1y ago
  Yeah. India has nammayatri.in as well (opensource/open data btw!) While it's availablity is very good, there are three competitors (one of which is uber) with better, more reliable availability so it's tough competition.

jnsie 1y ago

A decentralized Uber is an interesting thought experiment. I imagine the processing power required is a big barrier to entry for the FOSS community.

rightbyte 1y ago
Processing power? I don't think there is much processing power needed. Like, you only need to ping drivers in your vincinity.
- lurking_swe 1y ago
  Uber offers a lot more than just locating a driver. It’s a platform that generates a recommended route for the driver, shows the progress of the route to the customer in realtime so they know the driver is going the right direction, it calculates fares (e.g. distance, surge pricing, etc), and has other features like “share my ride details with my spouse” for example…for security purposes. That’s just what i could think of off the top of my head and i’m not a product manager at uber. Things are NEVER as simple as they initially seem. Other thoughts: - at uber’s scale, payment processing alone likely takes up quite a bit of compute server side. You could outsource this to a 3rd party, but it’s still an expense as you scale. - how would a decentralized system work if something goes wrong during the ride? who does the customer call? Drunk driver, attempted rape, etc. list of things that can go wrong is long. - your platform/app would need to be smart enough to know where all the “proper” ride share pickup spots are at every airport. Not trivial! - how would you offer a feature to “reserve a ride” like uber does, if you only build an app that can find “nearby drivers”? food for thought. :) All im pointing out is this kind of product needs to be a platform and is likely not cheap to run. It’s not 90% client side. Unless you literally just want to reinvent the taxi concept, in which case maybe the 90% client side approach is feasible.

GCUMstlyHarmls 1y ago

Is driver verification a hard thing here? Or simple to solve with a web of trust, assuming you could seed it with enough good actors? I think Uber verifies driver quality/qualifications and vehicle roadworthy-ness?

id00 1y ago
It's actually not that easy, especially at scale. Background checks cost money/time + compliance requirements are vastly different between regions/states/cities. And there are tons of government systems you need to get data from. And some counties require in-person visit to obtain court records. And you need those records to make valid assessments.

mongol 1y ago

There are such apps. In Sweden there is Fair, but from what I can gather it uses an app produced by ATOM Mobility, so I take it they use a ready-made platform. Check it out.

williamdclt 1y ago

> driver-owned cooperative app that takes no profit FWIW, the oversight of Uber on drivers is part of the success of Uber. I'm not talking about their mistreatments of drivers, but the fact that as a consumer I have reasonable confidence that the driver has been doing a decent job so far and that if I have a problem with the driver, there'd be some consequences through Uber. It's part of what allowed their success: from unaccountable taxi mafias to a service consumers can trust. It's far from perfect of course but it's good enough that I'm confident enough using Uber (although I avoid it for other reasons) even in foreign countries. It's probably not impossible to achieve with a co-op, but it seems more difficult

jajko 1y ago
> From unaccountable taxi mafias This is my biggest problem with taxi service in the past. Unless they behave criminally towards you and you can go to police, you were at their mercy. Any cost had to be accepted, no idea how much it would cost upfront. There were whole scam rings around that in some parts of Europe, taking foreign customers via very elongated roads to destination. Or a story from a colleague - taxi driver in Paris literally threw out a customer in the middle of highway since he didn't like his personal political views on famous french protests. In normal situation that would mean the taxi guy losing his 200k euro medallion, in reality of course nothing, zilch, nada.
ellenhp 1y ago
I've been treated to the the "you're so beautiful, do you have a boyfriend" act about 2% of the time[0] I get into a stranger's car pretty much across the board, which makes me a little bit skeptical about whether these companies do meaningful oversight. It's possible that these incidents go mostly unreported though. I didn't report mine. As an aside, this is why I generally trust public transit more whenever it's an option. The worst case scenario is just so much less sinister when there are other people around than it is in a car alone with a stranger. [0] once in a lyft in seattle, the other in a taxicab in barcelona. figuring I've taken about 100 lifetime solo car rides with strangers which is probably an overestimate.
- 1y ago

bad_haircut72 1y ago

Yes their moat is the brand, drunk women will get in an Uber and feel safe because corporate is ultimately putting their name on the line every ride. Nobody will feel safe dealing directly with random strangers.

notyourwork 1y ago
> Nobody will feel safe dealing directly with random strangers. Let me tell you about taxi cabs.
- kortilla 1y ago
  This is part of why taxi cabs got maybe 1% of the ridership across the US of what uber/lyft get. Everyone hated taxis because they were so unreliable and unaccountable for scamming you outside of a few dense cities like NY.
  - Retric 1y ago
    Some searching suggests it’s not that far from 50:50 in terms of actual rides. Uber drivers average well under 20 hours per week. Taxi have significantly fewer drivers working much longer hours, but they dominate very short trips.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
      Makes sense to me. There is a lot of existing infrastructure anticipating cab companies. Airports, stadiums, hotels, resorts, etc. all with dedicated cab lines that can get you seated in a vehicle in seconds.
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  The ride apps solve the biggest concerns. They have driver ratings so you can see verification from many other riders that the driver is good and they have upfront pricing. Taxi's have started to use apps but at this point the trust is pretty much broken to anyone that's experienced the old "My meters not working but I'll give you a special rate" type of shit. Essentially Taxi drivers are the random strangers over the apps with ratings and reviews from other riders showing clearly.

tayo42 1y ago

> the FOSS community couldn't solve My guess is the real difficult part is maintenance and server costs. It's probably pretty expensive to run And plenty of competitors have popped up. Any time you travel outside of the US you need to use the local app. Didi, gojek, grab

GIVEDADDYABYTE 1y ago

In Washington DC we have Empower https://driveempower.com/ https://driveempower.com/ The idea is that drivers pay a flat fee per month and get to keep the entirety of the fare. I used it for a while but my desire to get somewhere fast outweighed my disdain for Uber as middleman. Eventually I went back to Uber/Lyft due to long wait times and unreliable pickups. It is a lot more like "some guy giving you a ride" instead of a car service. My buddy initially pitched it to me as a cheap alternative to Uber for drivers that were banned from Uber. It is nice that they don't have surge pricing. Empower is somewhere in between the convenience and price of Uber and public transportation.

porridgeraisin 1y ago
Yeah. India has nammayatri.in as well (opensource/open data btw!) While it's availablity is very good, there are three competitors (one of which is uber) with better, more reliable availability so it's tough competition.