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From the code name of these projects from Uber: Heaven(God View) / Hell, you can pretty much tell this company thinks it's playing god. This is terrifying and must be stopped!
It would seem to me that the Lyft company has the strongest case here against Uber based on a violation of the terms of service for the private API that Uber abused.
If Lyft were successful in their lawsuit, that would lend confidence to a follow-on suit by drivers.
So, no one was really able to answer my question last thread. In fact, I mostly got snarky condescending replies. I've stopped caring about such things though, so hopefully good-faith questions are still welcome: What's wrong with Uber tracking Lyft drivers? What is wrong with using a competitor's API to get real-time tactical information about them? Not only did it not harm Lyft drivers, but it actually aided them:…
As such under natural conditions there are few competitors in most industries. This is natural.
When incumbents apply even a modicium of "stop competitors" sauce, what had been "nearly impossible" can become "impossible." One of many, many examples of this would be dropping prices until new competitors are out of business.
For a lot of further examples that might expand your thinking but which don't for the most part apply to Uber, look up Monopoly behaviors.
But in short, with very good reason, what modern society has determined is that with regard to raising barriers of entry against potential competitors, the only fair thing to do is to completely ignore them.
Responding to them even minimally, such as dropping your prices until they're dead, is not considered in the interests of society over the long term. For similar (though not exactly the same) reasons, it is considered standard practice not to have a single strategic meeting with all of the direct competitors in the room, such as regarding pricing or other strategic aspects.
Again, what society has determined is that competitors need to, largely, ignore each other, and operate with respect to the market as though their competition did not exist.
I'm no professor, but since your question seems in earnest, after Googling the concepts I've mentioned please let me know if you are still of the same opinion as when you wrote your comment.
How does anyone, when asked to build such a program, not raise an objection, or say something? The ethical compromise made on behalf of all involved is startling, if this is true.
I just send the rockets up, where they come down is not my department. Why do people build weapons? Why do people pay taxes, that are used to fund immoral actions? Why do people provide services to immoral actors? Typically, the answer is money.
I'm not sure that a Lyft driver suing has as much bad potential for Uber as a class action of former Uber drivers. Given the reported churn there's likely a significant pool of those drivers, and since Uber apparently considers both Lyft and McDonald's as competitors, it seems likely that many of them are not feeling wealthy. IIRC the previous coverage noted that Uber was providing incentives to drivers who were usin…
It is no coincidence that Techcrunch loves writing negative articles about Uber almost weekly now.... It draws in page views which equals ad revenue from the constantly outraged.
How terrible terrible the news media has become, writing about things that happen, and that happen to interest people. Personally, I only read things that I don't want to read, and the options are really getting thin these days.
Uber lost me as a customer if there are other options. I was in Houston this past weekend and everyone is using Uber, no one using Lyft, etc. I ended up downloading their app and using it all weekend, and uninstalled it as soon as I got to the airport. I wonder how many other cities are basically exclusively Uber currently ?
How does anyone, when asked to build such a program, not raise an objection, or say something? The ethical compromise made on behalf of all involved is startling, if this is true.
I just send the rockets up, where they come down is not my department. Why do people build weapons? Why do people pay taxes, that are used to fund immoral actions? Why do people provide services to immoral actors? Typically, the answer is money.
That seems like a stretch; people pay their taxes because they don't want to go to prison, not because of money. If anything, money would be an incentive not to pay your taxes, so it seems obvious that there's something stronger than money at play there.
One after the other. To put a conspiracy/playful hat on - seriously this is not my serious opinion - could it be that Uber is getting set up? Not necessarily framed but "oops, this just got leaked" set of dominoes. Apparently quite a few people are mad at Uber, like Apple, and Google, and the taxi drivers ...
Something to note is that half (3/6) of Uber's board members are internal (Uber employees). So perhaps Kalanick is under no pressure of being ousted (maybe he has tie-breaking/veto privilege as the chairman) by the board, and so people that do want him removed are resorting to leaking bad press, in the hope that external pressure will force a change.