Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Uber Got Lost

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 144 posts

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#121

Post by Mathnerd314 »

sokoloff wrote: post #100
ehnto wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a taxi have cost $60? They tend to also have the pro of already being at the airport. I don't think "anti-taxi" was why most people picked up Uber, rather it was cheaper. So if that isn't the case then going to a taxi rank makes a lot of sense in many cases.

If Lyft was not reasonably priced, I'd have checked on the taxi situation. It turns out Lyft was $21 and change and I gave a $4 tip. If a cab was going to be $60 each way as well, I may have even gone and rented a car. I am spoiled by the ride hailing apps; a medallioned taxi is a distant last resort for me personally. I may never call for a cab again in my life and that'll be just fine for me. Walking up to an airpo…

At least in my area the taxis have rebranded to "zTrip" and similar and they all have apps very similar to Lyft/Uber. There might be room in the market now for a fare aggregator to cut down on the number of apps.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#122

Post by whenanother »

H8crilA wrote: post #94
cryptica wrote: post #73

Uber didn't get lost. It simply was never the kind of company that could acquire a monopoly big enough and fast enough to justify a multi-billion dollar valuation. I'm starting to think that many of the most successful tech companies of the past decade are not real monopolies but succeeded purely because the centralization of capital made it difficult for alternative projects to compete for a limited period of time.…

Billionaire half life is around 20 years. From 1995 till 2015 around 50% of billionaires dropped out of the league: https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/21/most-billionaires-lost-a-com... Big money doesn't equate smart money.

this is related to the fallacy of the top 1%. the fact of the matter is only celebrities or people who had a financial windfall makes up most of the so-called 1%. the reality is that the wealthy do not populate the top 1%. they are more likely to be found at the bottom 25% of earners as they are doing all they can to lower their tax burdens which primarily centers around eliminating their taxable income.

a better label for your stats is that it takes 20 years for a family to figure out how to hide their wealth.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#123

Post by criddell »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #121
sokoloff wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Lyft was not reasonably priced, I'd have checked on the taxi situation. It turns out Lyft was $21 and change and I gave a $4 tip. If a cab was going to be $60 each way as well, I may have even gone and rented a car. I am spoiled by the ride hailing apps; a medallioned taxi is a distant last resort for me personally. I may never call for a cab again in my life and that'll be just fine for me. Walking up to an airpo…

At least in my area the taxis have rebranded to "zTrip" and similar and they all have apps very similar to Lyft/Uber. There might be room in the market now for a fare aggregator to cut down on the number of apps.

In my experience, taxis are crappier cars and the drivers aren't as friendly. Have you ever had a taxi driver offer you a bottle of water?

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#124

Post by mbesto »

jrockway wrote: post #57
cactus2093 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evil is a little extreme. The drivers are still doing it, so they clearly prefer giving you a ride to not. To add in some more anecdotal stories — the only times I really take a lot of Ubers and talk to the drivers are when traveling, and I’ve found the opposite. In Austin and Portland recently I talked to quite a few drivers that were happy with the job. And they all mentioned the flexible hours as a perk. One guy w…

> The drivers are still doing it, so they clearly prefer giving you a ride to not. I'm not sure they've thought it through all the way. They're not sick today, so they don't need health insurance. Their car is new and doesn't need any major work, so the finances of eventually having to replace their car don't matter. Basically, I fear that we're getting the low prices we get by mortgaging the future. One day, your dr…

> One day, your driver is going to need surgery and 3 months off to recover.

This basically happened to a driver I used regularly using Wingz. He physically can't drive due to an illness he incurred recently and can't pay for the procedures because he can't drive. I am getting txt's from his family members with links to GoFundMe's to help pay for healthcare costs.

He's an honest person and genuinely struggling. It breaks my heart, but unfortunately this is How it WorksTM in America.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#125

Post by lacker »

ehnto wrote: post #99
sokoloff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was the "only has Uber" ride share user for a long time. Then I landed at Orlando and Uber was going to be $60+ for a 15 minute ride. Even though my company was paying for it, that was BS and I added Lyft on the spot. Lyft now gets probably 70% of my rides. That afternoon was a very costly surge for Uber.

Would a taxi have cost $60? They tend to also have the pro of already being at the airport. I don't think "anti-taxi" was why most people picked up Uber, rather it was cheaper. So if that isn't the case then going to a taxi rank makes a lot of sense in many cases.

I think the main reason people start using Uber isn’t that it’s cheaper than a taxi, it’s that they want a ride and there are no taxis around. I can’t catch a taxi at my house (which is like two miles from downtown Oakland, not the middle of nowhere) but I can get an Uber there easily.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#126

Post by [deleted] »

bobbiechen wrote: post #33
whatshisface wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cultural problem is with the investors that are willing to spend $100B to win a cut-throat $10M/year profit market.

Perhaps this is an example of a "dollar auction": A dollar bill is auctioned with these two rules: 1. (As in any auction) the dollar bill goes to the highest bidder, who pays whatever the high bid was. Each new bid has to be higher than the current high bid, and the game ends when there is no new bid within a specified time limit. 2. (Unlike at Sotheby’s!) the second-highest bidder also has to pay the amount of his l…

[deleted]

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#127

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

nsuser3 wrote: post #117
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #115

Curious: How would Uber engineers be able to detect Lyft notifications by just the accelerometer and gyroscope? I can't even think of how that would work.

Maybe by detecting the notification vibration?

But how would they know it's from Lyft?

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#128

Post by ghaff »

lacker wrote: post #125
ehnto wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a taxi have cost $60? They tend to also have the pro of already being at the airport. I don't think "anti-taxi" was why most people picked up Uber, rather it was cheaper. So if that isn't the case then going to a taxi rank makes a lot of sense in many cases.

I think the main reason people start using Uber isn’t that it’s cheaper than a taxi, it’s that they want a ride and there are no taxis around. I can’t catch a taxi at my house (which is like two miles from downtown Oakland, not the middle of nowhere) but I can get an Uber there easily.

It's probably a mix. I don't use them a lot but, when I do, it's mostly because taxi dispatch tends to suck, payment can be a pain when the card reader is "broken" (and in any case is usually a less straightforward process). The main time I'll often still use cabs is from the airport because they're right there; I use pre-booked private cars to and from my own airport. So price isn't really a factor.

But, to the degree that some people are using them to replace other forms of transportation, including car ownership at the margins, price does matter. A lot of rides people take today would probably not be taken at 2x pricing.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#129

Post by ENOTTY »

jen20 wrote: post #49
ENOTTY wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree re competitors. If you look at when Uber and Lyft left Austin, almost overnight, competitors willing to follow the local laws sprung up and soon began providing equivalent service. In my opinion, it's going to be impossible to establish a moat (aside from incumbency) in ridesharing (absent some kind of regulatory change heavily favoring incumbents). The second someone thinks they can do it better, th…

I was in Austin many times over the period that Uber and Lyft were not there. One of my takeaways was that building a mobile app which feels polished and actually works as advertised is _hard_ - not one of the local competitors managed it. Most of them didn’t even bother to distribute their app outside the US App Stores (a common issue with American companies) making it next to impossible to use for international vis…

I suppose this is just one person's opinion, but I had the opposite experience. My first time in Austin, I landed at the airport, brought up Uber, and got the message that it was not allowed. But almost immediately upon exiting the plane, I saw someone had left behind cards for RideAustin and Fasten with promo codes for each. Downloaded the app from the QR codes, opened the app, and the rest of the UX felt familiar to me. Switching was seamless.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#130

Post by tracer4201 »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #9

I feel deeply uncomfortable taking Ubers, especially in Seattle. The drivers are inevitably working class folk, just trying to scrape by. They inevitably mention the increasing rent and cost of living. They inevitably ask what I do and I have to respond that I'm one of the asshole carpetbagging tech people who come in and raise the cost of living, raise the rent. Services like Uber are placing the class barrier front…

I’m in Seattle. I’ve talked to some Uber and Lyft drivers who seem very upbeat and like what they do and others who hate it. I don’t go into this mental calculus every time I interact with an Uber driver, the person cutting my hair, or bagging my groceries. There are different jobs - you voluntarily took the job. No one is forcing you to be an Uber driver. Why the outrage? Is it that much better to work at WalMart, QFC, or fast food? Why not do those jobs? Do you also avoid buying groceries or purchasing anything at all made in China because of labor conditions?

I get it you want to take a stand somewhere - sure.

On a meta point, the NYT and other media outlets run a story on one of the big tech companies literally every single daily. If it’s not about Google being nefarious because they’re working with the US government then it’s about FB, or about Amazon selling items that can be a choking hazard for toddlers. The outrage culture is annoying and it keeps these companies making money.

Post reply on HN