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Comment by osrec | Hacker News Reader

I am amazed at the things Uber gets through and is still standing after...

Never underestimate the power of marketing. My mother for instance would use Uber over any ride-sharing system due to its insane exposure and the fact that these stories remain relatively unheard of in comparison.

My family and friends outside the tech industry have almost no clue about nearly all these scandals - especially the data breaches and the former CEO's indiscretions. About the only thing they hear is that some Uber drivers have assaulted passengers in the past, but they write that off against the fact that a lot of Taxi drivers have done the same in the past.

It is a telling example that the pain point of a bad taxi service in a city is usually enough for them to conformance rationalise that Uber is still a better alternative, despite any of these issues.

She used uber because the service is fantastic.

It's already way more common to use "Uber" as a verb, or even a noun, that doesn't necessarily even mean Uber the company itself.

People have asked me before if I'm about "to uber" or "take an uber" someplace and they say it in an obvious way that implies "any ridesharing company" (or lyft in my case since most people know I only lyft nowadays).

Uber just as a word for ride-sharing has become ingrained and won't be easy to get rid of, IMO.

At this rate, Uber may be the first company to have a generic name and go out of business so soon afterward.

Same as `googling` will long remain the synonym for `searching the internet`.

> Same as `googling` will long remain the synonym for `searching the internet`.

That's more due to the ubiquity and dominance of Google itself.

It's rare to hear someone say "I Googled it on Bing" or even "Let me Google my email" when they're using Outlook. Maybe not unheard-of, but definitely nowhere near the threshold needed for genericization.

>It's rare to hear someone say "I Googled it on Bing" //

True AFAIK but if you ever give computer support you'll find people "just google it" and use the greeting page on their browser [aka "the internet"] which is just as often Bing or Yahoo as it is Google. Google, the verb, is definitely generic but the RTM holders of Google have several hundred million of $currency to spend on lawyers to say it isn't.

In contract, saying to "get a lyft" can be confusing, if not meaningless.

It’s weird, I’ve been using Lyft as my only ride-sharing service for almost a year, but still catch myself saying “I’ll Uber over there in a bit” all the time. It’s definitely because saying “I’ll get a Lyft” is indistinguishable from “I’ll get a lift” and I was to disambiguate that I’m talking about a ride-sharing service, but I wonder how many other people do this and if (in several years at least) their trademark is in danger.

Their investors are too big to fail (to recoup their investments by IPO offloading to the sucker public).

Money.

how does this stop being the case? money > all else.

Start communities that use solar/wind energy, grow their own food (maybe using this in urban areas: https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/ove...), use WiFi mesh networking, maybe launch their own satellites (for inter-community links: https://newatlas.com/tubesat-personal-satellite/22211/), build their own things with multi-material 3D printers (maybe even print semiconductor components, who knows...) and employ barter rather than artificially scarce magical paper or e-coins. Also, employ "DIY Bio" in ethical life enhancing way, open production (open source everything etc) The technology and paradigms exist today or will fully exist soon.

Laws & strong enforcement, with an informed population.

While money gives power, the concern is that it's concentrated in a small number of people. Voting is not, and can result in controls of essentially any level.

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