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In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

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Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#41

Post by [deleted] »

n0us wrote: post #25
danielnaab wrote: post #10

A decentralized ride solicitation tool with a reputation system, maybe blockchain-based, could kill off Uber and Lyft almost overnight. Especially if existing taxi companies embraced it. I want to know if a driver is licensed, insured, etc. Uber doesn't provide that, and I don't like the rent-seeking aspect of their service. If it's winner-takes-all, it's only a matter of time until another winner takes all. I don't…

I'm not the one who downvoted, but I would imagine this is why. * Overnight is a bit too quick. Uber's service has grown so quickly partly because they have an organization behind it to fight against regulations which is part of what made their rapid growth possible. * Implementing a standardized "blockchain" protocol to guarantee all of those things is a non trivial task * Go outside of SF Bay, whip out your phone w…

[deleted]

Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#42

Post by Retra »

joe_the_user wrote: post #39
rbrogan wrote: post #3

The article is not convincing that these are natural monopolies. What happened to AOL and AIM? What happened to MySpace? There is also this recent article about Chinese innovation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10806386 Natural monopoly in the Information Age may turn out to have been natural, but it feels unnatural. There are explanations, but I, personally, do not find them to be convincing.

The weird thing with the "also-rans" of various competitions is that they seem to utterly collapse in a strange fashion. MySpace got shittier and shittier even as Facebook expanded and there was visible mind-share searching for new things. Yahoo has gotten similarly worse despite being in a space where people wanted a Google alternative. The impression I get is that also-rans basically aim to cash-out rather than con…

Some of those may be the result of trying to differentiate themselves. People might want an alternative to Google (the company), but they don't really want an alternative to Google (the search engine.)

If you're trying to beat someone like Google by offering a different-but-worse search engine, it's not really going to work. Facebook offers the same kind of problem. You're also not going to win by being the same. You have to do different-but-obviously-better, which is actually very very hard.

Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#43

Post by marme »

jpatokal wrote: post #40

Lyft has already lost the battle. The one to watch is Uber vs Didi Kuaidi, which owns China's market (80%+, vs <15% for Uber) and is tightly integrated into Wechat/Weixin, which is rapidly expanding outside China.

Didi Kuaidi is only competitive in china because of homefield advantage. They have used bribes and other tactics to hinder uber. Uber has had to fight with the government to even allow them to operate while didi kuaidi was granted a license to operate from day one because they are invested with big names who have government connections. Outside of china didi kuaidi can not compete with uber. It is the same reason why amazon does so bad in china. China is a strange market where corruption and physical social networks play a large role in business the foreign companies just cant compete with

Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#44

Post by ddingus »

danielnaab wrote: post #10

A decentralized ride solicitation tool with a reputation system, maybe blockchain-based, could kill off Uber and Lyft almost overnight. Especially if existing taxi companies embraced it. I want to know if a driver is licensed, insured, etc. Uber doesn't provide that, and I don't like the rent-seeking aspect of their service. If it's winner-takes-all, it's only a matter of time until another winner takes all. I don't…

It might work just fine, but it clearly does not have the sex appeal associated with a big potential market and a profit seeking gatekeeper.

And nothing wrong with that, mind you.

Frankly, I see the incentive to develop such a thing directly correlated to how well existing, centralized players treat their market potentials.

Uber appears to have developed a lot of negatives quickly. I know little about Lyft.

The dynamic might just be the same sort of thing we see with closed vs open software, only with law playing the role patents play in software.

Like with closed software, ain't nothing wrong with that, but it had better be real easy and deliver real value, or people will attempt something to keep that equation honest.

Notice how it's not hard, nor expensive to get access to Office these days. Some of that is Microsoft working hard to deliver value and serve it's markets, but the prospect of free / OSS out there keeps it all pretty sane too. There is zero chance of an OSS tool reaching critical mass, and the work needed to prevent that is good for everyone.

Say Uber continues to irritate... enter FUber, the decentralized, direct compensation, combination ride share, taxi service to the rescue. It could be a general marketplace. People want a taxi, exuber driver, rideshare, etc... sign up, check the little boxes and go.

Doing this would devalue things, but also doing this might show that there really wasn't anywhere near the value to begin with.

And some people just don't like the thought of that kind of check and balance gaining traction.

Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#45

Post by aetherson »

danielnaab wrote: post #32
aetherson wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting problem of working with "real" cabs is that you have to compete with street hails (that is, people doing the traditional stand-on-the-curb-and-wave-their-arms deal). This is a surprisingly big issue. During slow times, it's not a big deal. But during slow times, you also aren't providing very many rides to the cabbies. And also pricing, which I'll come back to. During peak times, it's very likely in a…

Interesting observations on the dynamic with "real cabbies." I would envision a decentralized system including both "real cabs", whose parent company vouches for a driver's licensing, as well as independent drivers, whose insurance company does. But if any driver participated in a transparent network, their reputation would be important to them, and I would assume that would be a deterrent to taking fares you don't a…

Well... I mean, it depends on how you do reputation.

Passengers do not by-and-large want to page through a list of cabbies and try to trade off the reputation of the person versus how far away they are or whatever.

Uber gives its reputation system some bite by just delisting drivers who fall below some rating system (and probably by threatening to do so considerably before they actually do so), and that's more-or-less what we did at Flywheel as well. But how does a decentralized system do that? For that matter, how does a decentralized system prevent the driver from just giving themselves a good rating by creating some dummy passenger accounts and upvoting themselves?

The reputation system also sort of implicitly depends on you having a working system that gets a substantial volume of rides. But the most vulnerable time for a TNC is right when you're starting out. You need to gain your users' trust, and that means getting them rides promptly the first few times they use you.

I'm not saying that it's impossible, and for the record I don't think that Uber has a "natural monopoly." I actually wouldn't invest in Uber precisely because I don't think they have any way to protect any profit margin they have. But mostly because I kind of expect that if Uber ever really demonstrates that they can actually make a decent margin, Amazon will come in and clone the service, not because you can do it with OSS.

Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#46

Post by 21echoes »

pervycreeper wrote: post #9

I would argue that with perfect unregulated competition, having more than one firm with a stable market share is a sign of INefficiency. Small differences will get magnified, and whoever has the small edge will completely dominate, assuming rational behavior.

assuming they offer precisely identical services...

Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#47

Post by neolefty »

bsder wrote: post #11

Not sure SideCar is a good example. Investors are pouring billions of dollars into Uber and Lyft in an attempt to get the monopoly position. That doesn't sound much like a natural "winner take all". Google got lucky because AltaVista was run by Digital Equipment Corporation, whose marketing was legendarily bad (slogan: "DEC has it now, but you can't have it.")

Also, Google's search results were profoundly better than Alta Vista, which had no real quality score as far as I could tell. I think it took me about 5 searches to switch permanently.

Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#48

Post by arockwell »

mosquito242 wrote: post #34
askafriend wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can get rides with Uber instantly versus waiting 20-30mins with the competition, then Uber can raise prices a bit and not lose many customers. People are impatient and Uber has already trained a vast audience that you click a button and get a car in 10mins or less. Once you get used to it, you won't settle for an inferior network where you have to wait 2x or 3x for a couple bucks less.

I think the keyword is significantly. If Uber tripled or quadrupled their prices, I think they'd be fairly vulnerable to regional competitors. Even an increase of 1.5x seems like it'd be hard to pull off. Speaking anecdotally, I know for sure that I'd use a cheaper alternative to save $5 even if it took an extra 10 min.

Lyft Line recently added this option. You can wait 10 extra minutes to save a few dollars.

Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#49

Post by danielnaab »

aetherson wrote: post #45
danielnaab wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting observations on the dynamic with "real cabbies." I would envision a decentralized system including both "real cabs", whose parent company vouches for a driver's licensing, as well as independent drivers, whose insurance company does. But if any driver participated in a transparent network, their reputation would be important to them, and I would assume that would be a deterrent to taking fares you don't a…

Well... I mean, it depends on how you do reputation. Passengers do not by-and-large want to page through a list of cabbies and try to trade off the reputation of the person versus how far away they are or whatever. Uber gives its reputation system some bite by just delisting drivers who fall below some rating system (and probably by threatening to do so considerably before they actually do so), and that's more-or-les…

The software agent that consumers interact with would have to be responsible for determining the accuracy of ratings.

I suspect that the most important aspect of such a system would be trusted participants: eg, insurance companies, city licensing agencies, etc. If you get one hundred great, but fake, reviews from shell accounts, it would be rather meaningless if your city didn't issue you a license on the blockchain, or you claimed false insurance which was somehow disputed on the same blockchain by the legitimate insurer.

Re: In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All

#50

Post by kzhahou »

danielnaab wrote: post #10

A decentralized ride solicitation tool with a reputation system, maybe blockchain-based, could kill off Uber and Lyft almost overnight. Especially if existing taxi companies embraced it. I want to know if a driver is licensed, insured, etc. Uber doesn't provide that, and I don't like the rent-seeking aspect of their service. If it's winner-takes-all, it's only a matter of time until another winner takes all. I don't…

Blockchains will unseat Uber? Spoken like a true techie!

Uber has a reputation system. It can double down on insurance/license guarantees. Decentralized has no immediate direct benefit for riders.

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