Uber loses ground in US as rival Lyft accelerates | Hacker News Reader

Uber loses ground in US as rival Lyft accelerates

ft.com

134 pointsgleglegle103 comments

The company I work for, only has Lyft as approved service for travel and expenses.

Everyone used Uber mostly, and then they announced Lyft is the only approved one. Not sure why that decision was specifically made when majority were expensing Uber trips

Maybe because the company you work for doesn't want to support Uber given their shady tendencies.

Very much doubt the company has any opinion on the way Uber operates it's business.

Why? Do you know the company?

There are plenty of companies that would be willing to have such a policy, even if it's not considered a common practice.

Does your expense reporting software have hooks that Lyft can use and Uber can't?

I tried Uber's Concur integration once, but our accounting people didn't like that I had a receipt in my expense report without a hardcopy... I ended up needing to print out the email receipt so someone else could scan it in.

Honestly, I always use lyft for business because they have the ability for me to store a company card and when I use it to add a memo for when I submit expenses.

Uber has separate profiles too for work and personal.

partnerships

Finance (or maybe HR if it's an after-hours perk or something) gets incentives/kickbacks? Can anyone that works in this area confirm?

That's called commercial bribery and it's against the law in most states, including California. Enforcement is pretty slack in the US (surprise surprise) but given that it involves employees making personal profit at the expense of employers companies generally would not tolerate this sort of behavior.

Do airline miles, hotel points, and car rental loyalty rewards count, and credit card rewards count?

Whoever is earning the rewards can earn quite a bit by choosing a higher priced options since it earns them more.

Was referring to company kickbacks (rebate) not personal profit

More likely someone in Finance or purchasing negotiated a preferential deal on behalf of the company.

Preferred supplier relationships are common in corporate America, for example "all employees fly United unless United doesn't go there," or "all employee car rentals are with Avis unless Avis doesn't serve that airport," or "all employee computers are HP unless there is a special exception," etc.

The company might get a partial rebate?

I have never heard of anything remotely like that from the HR side.

I have definitely heard of negotiated travel deals where the company gets some percentage of the spend back. So for instance a Delta flight might not be cheaper than United on the ticket booking site, but it ends up costing the company less. OTOH this was a Fortune 100 company with high travel spend so they had quite a bit of leverage.

There's a big difference between the company getting a deal vs. specific people in the company getting a kickback.

Are you the same person as GP? Because that's not the same username...

Perhaps you're speaking more generally, and saying that you've never heard of shady decisions made by HR dudes? Well, I have heard of such decisions, and I doubt I'm alone.

Shady decisions could be anything, this is specifically alleging bribery and corruption.

Someone I know works at a company with the same policy.

State reason (by HR department) for not using Uber: risk of being raped.

Apparently not a problem with Lyft though, so that's good news?

maybe they chose the known unpopular option as an effort to curb employee spending.

"Unlimited free construction paper for use as toilet paper! Our gift to you! Take as much as you please!"

Uber being more mainstream has nothing to do with quality comparison.

Even so, tell me again which is actually the crappy toilet paper in this comparison...

I use Lyft primarily because of the grossly offensive scandals surrounding Uber, I'm talking even from the early days when execs were caught bragging about threatening journalists, to sex abuse, to lying to everyone about their 6 blown red lights in a single week during self driving AI testing in SF. The services do the same thing, almost exactly; Uber's track record might as well be the deciding factor.

If you could see only one chart then I would say this is the one [0]. I was under the impression that Lyft & Uber were on quite even footing.

> The reports of Uber's impending death are greatly exaggerated. - Mark Twain

[0] https://archive.fo/Q0gkJ/595ad70474d05aa1f7b15600fe5ccec2f25...

For what it's worth, Lyft wasn't even available in my city until very recently (Houston). I've been using Lyft recently now because I have fewer doubts about the ethics of the company. As a customer, it's extremely easy to switch from one to the other. As far as I can tell Uber has exactly zero selling points over Lyft for a regular customer like me.

But that's just the aggregate US figure, right? Individual cities, especially "bellwether" ones, might show Lyft past the tipping point.

No, it's not past the tipping point, the article shows graphs with 60-80% for NY, SF and Boston.

It's interesting, while I don't live in one of those cities, I've been meaning to drop Uber over all of their apparent complete lack of ethics. I hadn't done so yet, but this article has reminded me of it and I'm installing Lyft now.

As much as we hate to think it, both awareness and social proof in decision making matter. And while I wouldn't have admitted it, part of it was thinking in the back of my head that quitting wouldn't make a difference. Seeing the graph showing the real impact of the #quituber campaign was both surprising and to be perfectly honest a bit motivating to me to keep to my word to use Lyft. Maybe not a full quit, but at least a 50/50.

I don't know if it's because I've been under a rock, but I noticed Uber advertising on TV for the first time this weekend with a "everyone needs a side-hustle" tagline. I noticed it because it's always a little jarring when SV technology companies turn to traditional media advertising (I still remember the Google SB ad), but I took it as a sign that Uber's organic driver growth has taken a real hit recently and they're now having to actively work to attract drivers.

Uber has been doing a bunch of product placement before this. They've had some relatively forced mentions on shows like SNL.

I've heard a lot of Uber ads on the radio this year, seeking drivers.

I know plenty of people who say "I'm getting an Uber", while using the Lyft app.

So Uber has definitely won in that department - all they have to do is not screw it up (any worse than they already did).

People will forget, and over time that name recognition will give them back the market share.

There are plenty of examples of trademarks that became generic terms for product or services where the initial trademark owner did not dominate in that market very long. Heck I could argue a genericized trademark may be a bad thing and signify the lack of uniqueness in the service Uber provides if all other competitors are described using the same term.

Yeah, it's a commodity, Lyft and Uber are perfectly interchangeable ime. I just call them all "cabs".

>There are plenty of examples

Name five?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

Aspirin, cellophane, kleenex, thermos, band-aid, crock pot, jacuzzi, photoshop, etc.

Shocking to me is that Tylenol is missing from that page. You hardly ever hear it called acetaminophen, even in hospitals.

Edit: Even the main Tylenol page links is ambiguous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tylenol

It's a wiki, so I'll guess I'll add it.

I think it's just a US thing, we (NZ) refer to it as paracetamol or the equivalent brand name "Panadol", the others are more globally used.

I wish it was more clear. There are three main widely available OTC medications that broadly cover main categories such as pain reliever, fever reducer, etc:

Ibuprofen (known colloquially more commonly as Motrin or Advil in the US)

Acetaminophen (also known by chemical name paracetemol outside of the US and brand name Tylenol in US)

Acetylsalicylic acid (also known as Aspirin, was previously a trademark but now a generic name)

I always try to avoid using the brand names in favor of the actual chemical names to dodge ambiguity and confusion (there are other brand names for acetaminophen, acetylsalicylic acid, and ibuprofen over the ones I have listed even in the US), but even then in the case of acetaminophen it cannot be avoided. Further compounding (pun intended?) difficulty is trying to pronounce acetylsalicylic acid to the layman instead of just saying "Aspirin". In the US at least, you can get away with saying ibuprofen vs "Motrin" and acetaminophen vs "Tylenol", but the Aspirin problem is a bit more of a difficult hurdle to overcome in terms of layman's communication.

Slightly tangentially, when referring to airports I even have the same problem. I always try to go by IATA airport code, but those apparently have ambiguities as well: AUS is the IATA airport code for Austin-Bergstrom, but in ICAO terms it's actually known as KAUS, presumably to avoid conflict with other airports outside the US who might also answer to the callsign "AUS"

I always found it interesting that zipper was a trademarked and then genericized name. Mainly b/c it's a verb that accurately describes what the product does.

Actually, as best I can tell, "zip[per]" didn't have that meaning (combine two lines in succession at some moving point of contact) until the product existed, so the verb only exists because of the product. Before that, it just meant "move quickly".

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=ZIP

The Aspirin trademark, along with Heroin, was stolen from them after WW1.

Well, in terms of profit/revenue, Photoshop still absolutely dominates to my knowledge. Latest stat I could find was 90% in 2010. http://www.dispatch.com/article/20100301/NEWS/303019733

Photoshop refers to Photoshop, made by Adobe. The rest are accurate though.

Photoshop is clearly a generic name nowadays, you can say that you photoshopped an image regardless of the software itself.

I think it was intended to be a list of generic names whose company isn't in an overwhelmingly superior position. Adobe Photoshop is still the >95% dominant image editor.

1) Kleenex 2) Google 3) Aspirin 4) Band-Aid 5) Jacuzzi 6) Post-It 7) Q-Tip 8) Sharpie 9) Taser 10) Xerox

I would argue that at least half of those don't qualify.

Kleenex, Google, Band-Aid, Post-It, Q-Tip, and Sharpie are all in a dominant position in their respective product categories. Off-brand examples of all of them exist, but all of my Sharpies are Sharpie brand, I use Q-Tip brand Q-Tips, I only Google with Yahoo or Bing when Google itself is down, and My Band-Aids are Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages.

Just this weekend I heard a friend say they "googled somebody on Facebook", meaning they searched for them in the Facebook search form. So it may have become a synonym for "online search" for some.

Also, I have used Post-Its all my life but did not even know until now that this was a company or product name.

While I think Post-Its are a potential candidate, I think your friend is just weird. I've only ever heard or used "google" as a verb to mean "performing a search via a web search engine to search the entirety of the internet", and even then it almost always includes the unspoken assumption that it will be done using Google.

I am not surprised by that usage. The are a lot of people for whom the difference between Google, Facebook, and Internet are not well understood.

Where are you? In new england I've never heard anyone call a tissue a kleenex.

I hear it all the time around DC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

I'm from Boston and I've heard Kleenex all my life. Tissue sounds highfalutin.

That's hilarious because to me Kleenex sounds highfalutin, and tissue sounds normal.

And I actually use Kleenex brand!

Hmm. I've heard it in Maryland and California.

To the other examples add Velcro (R).

Across a variety of contexts:

Hoover Kleenex Photoshop Xerox Band-Aid

zamboni

Lyft is a homonym of "lift", and "getting a lift" has been used for decades (or longer?) to mean being driven somewhere by someone. Saying Uber conveys more information, so people say that.

Still a branding win from Uber.

I use "uber" when I really mean "lyft" - ie "Want to get an Uber?" is much more clear than "Want to get a Lyft"? I think any other more recognizable name would have been a plus for Lyft.

You don't say "taxi"? It's just as short, starts with a consonant, not ambiguous, translates between cities, is obviously generic, doesn't give mindshare to a nasty company and contains the letter "X"...

The only downside I can come up with is that "taxiing to" is more awkward to say than "ubering to". As Calvin says, though, "Verbing weirds language."

The obvious problem here is that taxi or cab to most people means the thing with a light on top that you raise your hand to hail.

ditto. Lyft, pronounced of course as lift is a bad name for a company/service. Astonishing as the company first launched as Zimride.

ps. I take Lyft 99 % of the time, for years already. Every industry needs an underdog to keep the big guys on their toes. In particular shady ones.

Converesly, most of the people I know say "get a Lyft" and mean Lyft. I don't really think this is universal.

Unless they lose their trademark because it becomes genericized.

I do this, mainly because “I’ll get a Lyft” can confuse people.

I'm looking forward to the tell-all about Lyft's PR black ops against Uber.

I've got a buddy who works for (possibly one of multiple?) Lyft's PR firm, and has worked on that account.

You don't need any sort of 'black ops' when your competitor is busy generating their own bad headlines. Instead you just call up your journalist connections every time Uber does something stupid to make sure they saw it.

I don't know. It's very convenient that Lyft is seen as the do-no-wrong Uber alternative.

Once the dust settles, it will be interesting to see whether Lyft is as innocent as everyone presumes.

Given how Uber operates, if Lyft is doing anything wrong, I would expect Uber would already be publicizing it, and indeed be trying to make it look a good deal worse than it really is.

Marc Andreessen and A16Z deserve scrutiny here.

The most critical outlets are those with one of those two as investors.

Pando Daily: Andreessen has 8% ownership https://pando.com/about/

Buzzfeed: A16Z invested $50m in Buzzfeed https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/10/buzzfeed-raises-50-million...

Business Insider: Andreessen participated in the Venture Series, Series B and Series D https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/business-insider#/en...

More neutral/balanced outlets like Recode and TechCrunch don't have either as investors. Recode for example was the only media company that mentioned the death of Travis' mother as a primary motivation for taking leave of absence. The less balanced sources above barely mentioned that "detail" at the bottom of the articles on that matter.

A16Z did Lyft's $60m Series C: https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-round/3b6daa9a-7bb9-d7de-...

This is the type of stupid, silly, obvious smokescreen that makes it easy to portray Uber as a cartoon villain.

"PR black ops" against Uber would probably consist of "smack down any Lyft people who approach 10% of Uber's public idiocy quotient," plus finding some charities to support, maybe something involving kittens and puppies.

Standing back and pointing would do it. "Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake."

Based on the chart below, Uber still owns 80% of the market. So, still in a very dominant position.

I wonder why Gett is not figured in there.

https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt...

Gett doesn't exist out of NY. Lyft does.

Anecdotal, but Uber has a social stigma with a lot of my left-er friends.

This article really fails to make a compelling case for Lyft other than the switches coming from the #DeleteUber campaign. While I agree these market share grabs from the underdog are huge, I feel like the author is overstepping the wait of the data. Relying really heavily on narrative.

Would love Lyft over in the UK. Uber is the only taxi company (they are a taxi company if they like it or not) with an app which doesn't crash on launch

HN link is still paywalled for me, so here's the archived version of it that's not paywalled: https://archive.fo/Q0gkJ

paywalled...

The web link at the top of HN works, but the chart in the article tells most of the story: https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt...

I'm actually shocked that #deleteuber had that large of an impact. Maybe this is the cynic inside me, but I feel like social media campaigns like those didn't have much impact. Guess I was wrong.

at the end of the day it's just an app... there is no Uber infrastructure such as a bus stop... very few real assets... and not a ton of IP if every car company, Google, and others are competing.

they had a great brand and the only thing they had to do was not fuck it up before they reached the next level. and instead they spent most of their cash on fighting rivals, built a culture that is eroding the brand and behind on the next thing in transportation.

Getting your app on someones phone is a substantial, lasting competitive advantage. Getting them to use it regularly is even more of one.

Not clear that it has. From FTA:

Uber’s global sales are still growing, with first-quarter revenues surging to $3.4bn, triple the levels of the previous year. However, its growth rate in the US is slowing and investors have become concerned after a period of crisis has left its top ranks in disarray.

In other words... the company is still growing massively, from a large base. It's just not growing as fast as it once did. As happens too often, the headline doesn't match the data.

It looks like it barely had any effect. Lyft has been far behind but slowly gaining mark share for years. The chart looks like they briefly accelerating that gain rate, then returned to normal.

It didn't. Draw a straight line from early 2015 to present.

Notice the trendline, and how late 2016 was above the line, then the correction, and back to trendline.

Was the correction you mentioned not caused by #deleteuber? It seems like the impact was a huge correction.

AMP non paywalled link

Edit: amp link is paywalled too

Paywalled for me, though it works via the HN web link / Google search path.

What's the HN web link/google search path?

edit: nevermind, figured it out. Just search the title in Google, which gives you a link to the article.

Scroll to the top of the page, click the link labeled web. It runs a Google search that should put the article near the top. Useful because many paywalls make an exception for traffic that comes in that way.

If you're posting a paywalled article it would be considerate to post some excerpts of the main thesis and argument.

"Lyft, which completed a $600m fundraising in April, has expanded into 150 new cities this year " seems like this would skew the numbers a bit. Uber is already everywhere it needs to be in the US. Lyft is irrelevant until they prove they can compete internationally imo, they are way behind uber here

Irrelevant is a strong term. I agree that I still have Uber installed precisely because I travel internationally, but for my use here in the US I've switched entirely to Lyft (and been pleasantly surprised! Though I'm still waiting for them to make it easier to switch between the different levels of service to compare rates).

> Lyft is irrelevant until they prove they can compete internationally imo, they are way behind uber here

Why should they compete internationally?

From what I can see, international competition is wildly unprofitable, subject to the whims and vicissitudes of local politicians, and subject to local competition who understand their market far better than any foreign firm.

International travel is a major use case for these apps. When I'm traveling I don't have my car with me and my usage of Uber skyrockets.

100% fake news. There's no way they actually have any ride data from either company to back up this claim. In fact there's another bit of equally fake news posted to HN right now that says that recent events have failed to put a dent into Uber marketshare. "Journalists" should stop making shit up, and instead stick to reporting facts.

"...according to data from Second Measure, a research firm that uses anonymised credit card data"

Perhaps not 100% accurate, but not 100% fake either.

Second Measure relies on undisclosed data sources of unknown accuracy. So this is very much like those reports from "anonymous sources familiar with Comey's thinking" (an actual quote).

fake news is flat out making stuff up, whereas this is simply reporting from a named and referenced source. How is that fake news? That term is bandied about incorrectly as a smoke screen enough already without people wilfully abusing it here as well.

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