This is pretty standard terminology for marketshare. "Apple takes smartphone market share from Android thanks to strong iPhone sales" [1] and similar. The idea is that the marketshare was one place, and another company was able to grab it. Maybe through a better product, maybe through cheaper pricing, maybe through a big ad campaign, maybe through mismanagement at the first company, maybe through changes in trends and styles, lots of possible reasons. Whether they "earned" it or not in some moral sense isn't usually particularly decidable or relevant.

[1] http://www.geekwire.com/2015/apple-takes-smartphone-market-s...

Yes, why "taking"? What Uber is doing is obviously working.

Pre-Uber days, getting a cab in NY was painful. You can't call them to come pick you up. More often than not, the cabbie will complain about taking a credit card or just say the machine is broken. Rides TO the airport are a mixed bag of using the fixed fare vs the cabbie encouraging you to go off of it.

Are there are legitimate complaints about Uber that don't come from the standpoint of defending the incumbent cab industry? I just don't get the constant hate they receive.