Grab is acquiring Uber's SE Asia business | Hacker News Reader

Grab is acquiring Uber's SE Asia business

zdnet.com

38 pointsgringoDan36 comments

I was in Manila last month, and mostly took Uber; the experience was exactly like using it in the US.

I took one Grab ride, and the experience couldn't have been more different. I booked the ride on Grab, and saw the car coming towards me on the map. Just as it arrived, the driver waved to me out of his car, and then canceled the ride in the app. The car & licence plate were completely different to the one shown in the app.

Next to the driver was sat his friend, who talked to me throughout the 10 minute ride, and gave me his cards in case I needed to book a hotel or ride on my next visit.

When we arrived, I gave cash to the driver (the amount that the app had priced it at originally) and bolted. I couldn't leave any feedback in the app, because the canceled ride had disappeared.

It's hard to tell if this is a one-off weird experience, or a typical Grab ride. Either way, it made me unlikely to want to use it again, and I was planning to go back to Uber on my next trip to SE Asia.

It might have been a Manila thing, but when I was in Bangkok I used Grab pretty often (maybe 5 times per week for a month) and I never had an experience like that. I had some experiences where drivers would only go to a certain part of the street, but in general it felt like Uber or Lyft in the states, plus I enjoy the UX a little better than Uber.

Yes, my experience is the same. Grab is my go to "taxi" app when I'm in SEA. I've always found it's drivers to be more reliable and more professional than Uber's. And the app is no where as confusing as Uber's. The big problem with Uber is that it's all tied to your phone number. But the first thing you do when travelling is pick up a SIM card for the country you're in. Grab is tied to either FB or Google login so you can just easily log in and update your phone number.

(I haven't been to Manila, so I'm not sure what it's like there.)

That's a 'one off' thing; fraud is pretty prevalent in rideshare applications in SEA (Uber included).

No way I would get into that cab.

I had hit and miss with Uber in SE Asia. In Vietnam I did 8 trips that worked perfectly.

When I arrived to Malaysia three Uber drivers cancelled the ride in a row and tried to get in touch outside Uber to arrange the ride. Reported this to Uber which handled it well, but decided to not use Uber in Malaysia after that.

Instead I changed to Grab and did 15 trips in Malaysia and Indonesia, which all worked well.

So I would say that both services generally work well and often better than local taxi.

My experiences in PH has been along the same lines as yours, although not as dramatic. Uber works well as long as your driver can get to you. Manila's infamous traffic jams can result in a driver only 1 km away taking over half an hour to get to you.

I have never had a successful ride with Grab there. Rides are accepted, then simply cancelled some time later with no explanation, even when waiting at an official Grab pickup point.

Dividing up the world into monopolies that's vaguely reminiscent of the Merchant Kings[1].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Merchant-Kings-Companies-Ruled-1600-1...

Yikes. Not really looking forward to this. I've always found Grab to be pretty sketchy and unreliable compared to Uber when traveling in SE Asia.

FYI: Grab is the company that Steve Yegge moved to. He wrote about leaving his last company for it in a recent blog post:

https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/why-i-left-google-to-join-gr...

> Another takeaway is that Uber can be beaten, when a few years ago they seemed unbeatable. Frankly I personally think Uber is gonna lose SEA as well.

I wonder if he was privy to this deal while writing this post.

I'm interested in why that is relevant to the story?

Also can you please explain to me why Steve Yegge is so important? You obviously felt this point was important enough to mention.

He's a well-known technology blogger who went to work for the company mentioned in the headline.

A well known-technology blogger a decade ago?

I see 3 blog post in the last 10 years.

https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/

And I recommend you go read everything he’s written.

And yet you can't say why. I just should because its "Yegge."

It's fascinating to me the cargo-culting of this person on HN. It's funny that the even questioning this person on HN invites immediate ire and downvotes.

At one point I did go read a handful of articles and I found none of them remarkable. I just found them self-indulgent.

So you do know who he is then?

You’re being downvoted since you are obviously trying to make a different point - that Yegge is overrated / overhyped / whatever - than what you led with, I.e. pretending to not know who he is and questioning why even mentioning him would be relevant.

I never pretended not to know who he was. I simply asked why it was relevant to mention him in this context.

Well that’s the appearance you gave by asking the question you did and saying there are only 3 posts from 10 years ago. But you know that.

Of course I can say why, but you didn’t ask that question.

His posts are thoroughly entertaining and well written. They’re long, but true to the title of “blog rants”. You might end up disagreeing with some of his opinions but that’s ok.

And if you’ve read some, and they’re not for you, that’s ok. But no need to shit on other people for enjoying them and claiming we’re in some kind of cult.

At the time they were written, his blog was one of the best in my opinion.

He's an interesting outspoken programmer that a lot of people respect his opinions.

Did you read that blog he wrote about Grab? I am curious if you respect his opinions in that. Most of it is pretty cringe-worthy not least of which of are his neo-colonial claims and stereotyping. Some highlights from the blog post include:

"I’m getting myself involved in a land war in Asia."

" ... because — as any Asian person will happily tell you — they love their food more than you do"

"Southeast Asians use smartphones possibly more than anyone else in the world."

> "I’m getting myself involved in a land war in Asia."

This is a humorous reference to the movie "Princess Bride," not a call to arms for neo-colonialism.

And you realize that that's a reference to General Montgomery right?

Ive been reading his blog posts for years, if you are going to form an opinion over one post Im not sure what to say to you.

It seems relevant to HN's discussion of the story, because his blog post about leaving Google for Grab got 311 points + 182 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16220666 , and a mainstream media article about that blog post got another 180 points + 89 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16226439 . (It looks like you commented on both threads.)

I don't read the comment above is a reflection of Steve Yegge's importance in general, just as a useful piece of information linking this news to something HN previously thought was important (his move to Grab).

It's also likely that many others here, like me, only heard of Grab in the first place, because of the Yegge post.

His post was very self-righteous, as if Grab had some level of moral superiority over Uber. Once he awakens to the fact that Grab is just as "immoral" as Uber, I hope he writes another post eating humble pie. All the ridesharing companies behave exactly the same, especially the ones in Asia that can escape from the biased views of American reporters.

So Uber gets 30% of a monopoly instead of 100% of a business in a competitive market? Good trade.

20%, not 30%.

As always, for Uber, you have to understand their moves in the context of their valuation. Uber has raised money at a $70B valuation (although their most recent fundraising was at a mere $50B). They did that on the promise that they would get big, somehow raise unit margin, and become a business that would eventually turn not just profits, but profits commensurate with their valuation.

Profits commensurate with their valuation are probably somewhere in the $5B to $10B per year range, once they're no longer growing that much. If all of SE Asia contributes only a couple hundred million to those profits -- even if those profits are nearly risk-free -- then that's not wonderful for Uber (or at least to Uber's investors).

And more so, signals that say "We will not be able to establish stable high market share alongside stable high profit in many markets" are really bad for Uber's prospects for raising money.

Terrible news. From my experience Grab’s UX and driver ed was much worse than Uber’s.

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