Oracle’s Larry Ellison Calls Uber and WeWork ‘Almost Worthless’

They've been doing this for years now. Significant savings that way too.

At least one bit of the value is that you do not have to install new app or two in every city you go to. I wish something like this existed for parking payments.

Uber is absolutely adding value, in my opinion. Disclaimer: I’ve invested a paltry amount in them

Uber is a taxi dispatcher and provides a rating system that provides a vastly improved product to the end user. Seriously Uber is so much better than taxis. You can hail it from your phone, track its arrival in real time, know the fare before you book it. It arrives in 10-20% of the time of a dispatched taxi, costs less, and has much better drivers on average both in terms of skill/not being aggressive, not being assholes, English, and cleanliness.

Uber freight is frankly just a good idea. They already have a huge fleet of drivers and a lot of the tech backend in place to start doing last mile delivery. Lots of value add in that, and in combining last mile delivery with concurrent user transportation.

Uber also has a lot more international exposure than Lyft.

The only issue I have with them as an investor is in Uber eats. It’s costing too much money to subsidize, has too much competition, and food delivery just isn’t something I think can work in the US.

But regardless, when you look at Uber’s core product, I think you would have to have either forgotten about taxis or never have taken Ubers/taxis to begin with to think it’s not a vastly better product.

I moved into an economically depressed area and let me tell you: it was hit and miss taking taxis. It didn't matter if I called dispatch repeatedly or booked ahead of time even with the more expensive car service, I could never count on a taxi to show despite the fact I was very clear about this being a coveted airport ride. Nobody wanted to pick up a fare at 4 AM in the ghetto and I nearly missed my plane more than once.

I eventually punted and had my wife drive me to the closest hotel with a cab stand. But that meant she had to get up and drive me around at 4 AM just because the cab company was unreliable.

Now with Uber not only is the car there within minutes but the charge against my corporate card is automatically sent to my corporate expense system. So no from my perspective Uber is far better! And this is despite the uber app wanting to spy on users between and after use. But that's what location permissions are for. Or just uninstalling the app entirely when not in use.

The biggest thing that Uber added was the ride-summoning app. I gather that these are beginning to come into existence for taxi companies, but especially at the time, it was a huge boon to download one app and be able to summon a ride wherever you went.

Instead, you often had to place an actual voice phone call -- or multiple calls, since different companies had different dispatchers. You would get no feedback on when your taxi might arrive -- or even if it was. I've answered plenty of panicked phone calls from friends whose prearranged taxis didn't arrive and were desperate to get to an airport before their flight.

If the taxi companies had acted professionally about it, Uber might not have been able to take off. As it was, using Uber was simply a better experience than taking a taxi -- except perhaps right in the middle of the most taxi-heavy cities, where you could stick out an arm. It wasn't so much about price as about just knowing that the ride was coming, and not really caring who precisely provided it. The taxi companies were not competing on anything I cared about.

The actual car-sharing aspect of their service is of dubious merit, and I prefer Lyft to Uber anywhere I can. But I'll take either to having to actually phone a dispatcher, or having to download Waave in New York and myTaxi in London and god only knows what in Cinncinnati.