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Comment by baddox | Hacker News Reader

You seem to be implying that they are violating privacy just for the heck of it. That's ignoring the very obvious value (even to customers) of this specific type of data. As the other commenter mentioned, knowing where humans choose to be dropped off when heading to a specific location is of obvious value.

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> You seem to be implying that they are violating privacy just for the heck of it.

Why not both? Why not collect all the information you possibly can, whether or not you immediately see obvious value to it, and then find ways to justify it later?

> Why not collect all the information you possibly can, whether or not you immediately see obvious value to it, and then find ways to justify it later?

Because it's non-trivial and it costs a lot of money to do that, in terms of engineers' salaries, storage, etc.

> it costs a lot of money to do that

Well they _have_ raised $15,000,000,000 in cash: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/business/dealbook/why-uber...

Well-run companies don't waste money just because they are flush with cash -- especially not when that cash represents board members who want their investment to pay off, not be frittered away on something with no business value.

I'm not claiming that they don't collect as much data as possible including data with no immediate use. Perhaps they do. I don't know. I'm claiming that this instance does not appear to demonstrate them doing so.

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