At least in Europe there were apps to call a taxi and sites to book vacation homes before either Uber or AirBnB came over. But sure ruthlessly minimising personnel responsibilities and costs can be another "value".
Where?
In France the taxis never accepted debit cards (= tax evasion), and generally provided piss-poor service. They've stepped their game up massively since Uber arrived.
In the UK I never saw a taxi app that wasn't an utter heap of garbage.
Sweeping generalizations about EU countries are almost always wrong or meaningless.
Hold on now. Hailo was amazing. Pity they broke themselves trying to take on the big apple.
Hailo was often fully booked when I tried using it, and I had several previous-day reservations evaporate into thin air. It wasn't (as) reliable.
London taxis have always been slightly better than the FR/ES/BG/IT taxis I've taken, but not that much better. And the apps have either gone bust, not worked, or both.
In my hometown I'm just calling taxis off the street or via plain old phone.
Taxi apps before Uber were either non-existent (still are for most places) or unusable.
Can you please edit personal provocations like that out of your posts to HN? They add no information and are often wrong. The comment would be fine with just the second sentence.