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

Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 424 posts

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#381

Post by user5994461 »

kmonsen wrote: post #228
paulddraper wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still have the momentum. This isn't a start up trying to figure out how to make money (Twitter) or a company that can't/won't change (Blackberry). This is a company making money that is pursuing a blitzkrieg on the industry. They can sit back any day and rake in billions. I agree there isn't a high entry barrier, but I don't think they've lost the first-to-market advantage.

The thing is once they stop subsidizing the rides, will people stop using them?

Yes. It's too practical to stop using it. Plus, many places don't have a viable alternatives to Uber/Lyft.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#382

Post by Naritai »

MarkMc wrote: post #318
Naritai wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is addressed elsewhere on this thread, but I'll repeat: drivers have no compunction about having multiple apps open at the same time. Nothing ties them to Uber.

Sure, but nothing ties eBay sellers to eBay. For an Uber driver to add another Taxi app it's not just a case of downloading and installing the app. They have to create a user account, enter their bank account details, verify their email address, take a photo of themselves, their car, drivers licence and insurance documents and upload them to the Taxi app server. Then wait a day or two for it all to be processed. If t…

the eBay analogy would be that nothing stops people from posting the exact same product on multiple sites at the same time. If I were looking at something on eBay, and I could do a quick google to find that same product on another site for 15% less, eBay will very quickly find themselves in trouble.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#383

Post by msane »

forgetsusername wrote: post #350
msane wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's introducing people to the service and acquiring market. Better prices come later.

> It's introducing people to the service and acquiring market. Better prices come later. You say this as if 75% of the reason people take Uber isn't price, and that one day Uber will simply be able to jack up all their prices and make money. Demand doesn't work that way.

Demand does work that way.

Why does a drug dealer give free samples at first? ... Creating demand.

What they will not have for long though is a monopoly on supply in India.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#384

Post by [deleted] »

forgetsusername wrote: post #350
msane wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's introducing people to the service and acquiring market. Better prices come later.

> It's introducing people to the service and acquiring market. Better prices come later. You say this as if 75% of the reason people take Uber isn't price, and that one day Uber will simply be able to jack up all their prices and make money. Demand doesn't work that way.

[deleted]

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#385

Post by astrodust »

Eridrus wrote: post #153
astrodust wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live they were already working to phase out the medallion system by introducing new permits for cabs that don't require medallions. They're cabs just the same, with the same requirements for insurance and such, but were a way of expanding the number of cabs without expanding the medallion pool. This softens the depreciation in the medallion market. The cab drivers who paid a lot of money for their medallions…

From what I can tell, cities have largely been able to kick Uber out, if they want to, but many residents are not interested in eating shit from taxi companies for another 10-15 years, so it's been hard to kick them out by appealing to their sympathy for the medalion holders.

It's not "sympathy" for medallion holders, but the fact that those holders have considerable political sway. Anything too dramatic, too abrupt will be staunchly opposed.

A more gradual phasing out helps to ease the pressure on this system and move to a more market-driven approach.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#386

Post by orthoganol »

intrasight wrote: post #212
colechristensen wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reckless and non-viable in much of the world. Nobody is going to get an autonomous car working in a winter climate for a long time. Lines on the road can't be seen, there are potholes, driving through deep piles of snow are common, communicating with other drivers and accomidating and anticipating their actions in snow narrowed streets is necessary.... There are plenty of times of year where I'd be wary trusting a hu…

Uber autonomous doesn't have to be better than the best human drivers in all conditions. They only have to be much better than the average human driver in all conditions. This isn't a very high threshold to meet.

This is a false equivalence that I've seen a few times here and elsewhere. It's wrong because:

The majority of car accidents are correlated with someone's fault, related to altered state, inexperience, distraction, or bad judgment. Some types of people are prone to accidents, others are less prone.

But in the self driving car world it's all equal - it's completely arbitrary who is a victim of an accident.

Someone who has never run a red light or had an accident in their life because they are an alert, careful, experienced, defensive driver suddenly has all that stripped from them and now they are driving at just an "above average" level.

Why should the good, consistent drivers be punished? (And they absolutely would if we settle for just "better than average"). I'm all for driverless cars, but only with patience; no one should even entertain mass adoption of self-driving cars without a minimum of multiple years of testing in live traffic with zero accidents or major traffic violations (by fault of self-driving car).

Seeing the traffic violations at the start of the SF program, we probably ought to expect the mass adoption minimum 5 years out, more likely 10-15.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#387

Post by henrikschroder »

kbart wrote: post #313
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you needed a different app for each taxi company. That's a terrible experience.

"Yes but you needed a different app for each taxi company." Depends on a market I guess. Here you have a single app for all local taxi companies (actually, there are few competing apps, but you get a point), you can even select which companies do you want to use via checkboxes, because their price differs. Same centralized service works with SMS too, if you don't want to install app or have an ancient cell phone.

Cool, but where's "here"? :-)

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#388

Post by microtherion »

lacampbell wrote: post #202
vertex-four wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as a leftist, Hacker News is very, very libertarian-leaning most of the time by nature of its general support for startup companies no matter what laws they break and its general dislike of laws and systems designed to protect people from the sociopathic entities we call companies. There's some dissent, but it's certainly not a progressive haven. This is one of those places where people will happily sit around an…

The sociopathic entities we call governments are far more powerful and do far more damage than those we call companies. MacDonalds has yet to bomb anyone that I am aware of, and I can't recall Google using force to prevent someone leaving a country, or Amazon water-boarding people it has captured through overseas kidnapping.

Corporations generally don't do their own bombing and waterboarding, but they sure hire OTHERS to do their bombing and waterboarding for them. Cf Pepsi's role in the Chilean coup https://www.theguardian.com/business/1998/nov/08/observerbus... or the United Fruit company's role in Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_massacre or Guatemala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobo_Árbenz

And of course, in their regular operation, many companies routinely pollute the environment: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2011/05/10722/koch-industries-to...

Funny how libertarians never seem to consider dumping millions of lbs of poison into the environment an "initiation of force", but god forbid government raise taxes by one cent.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#389

Post by microtherion »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #146

As others point out this isn't necessarily bad, but it does mean that Uber is extremely vulnerable. If we learned anything in the last bubble it was that attempting to bootstrap through the power curve is exceptionally susceptible to capital constraints. Back in the dot com days a number of 'baby telephone companies' that were building out their networks and spending huge amounts of money on laying out the infrastruc…

The question is whether Uber is buying anything of durable value with their billions. Dot-com companies were buying warehouse space, laying fiber, creating lock-in. Uber might be running competitors out of business, but it's a business with low barriers to entry, and they're not really locking in customers or drivers.

They may claim to be building a moat, but to me it looks more like they're buying overpriced water.

Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue

#390

Post by lacampbell »

microtherion wrote: post #388
lacampbell wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sociopathic entities we call governments are far more powerful and do far more damage than those we call companies. MacDonalds has yet to bomb anyone that I am aware of, and I can't recall Google using force to prevent someone leaving a country, or Amazon water-boarding people it has captured through overseas kidnapping.

Corporations generally don't do their own bombing and waterboarding, but they sure hire OTHERS to do their bombing and waterboarding for them. Cf Pepsi's role in the Chilean coup https://www.theguardian.com/business/1998/nov/08/observerbus... or the United Fruit company's role in Colombia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_massacre or Guatemala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobo_Árbenz And of course, in their reg…

If you want to play the game of "find the worst things corporations have done to prove they are worse than states", then you will surely lose. How does the actions of those corporations compare to say the bombing of Hiroshima, or the Great Leap Forward, or the Holocaust?

It's also worth noting - both of your examples involved the state actually doing the dirty work.

Funny how libertarians never seem to consider dumping millions of lbs of poison into the environment an "initiation of force"

Citation needed - AFAIK there is no such consensus.

Post reply on HN