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Comment by reverend_gonzo | Hacker News Reader

Wtf?

It is completely different. Before Uber, you had to call dispatch, give them your location or your closest estimate of it: dispatch would then manually try to find a car that was available and send them to you. This usually took at least 30-40m, if they arrived at all.

With Uber, I open the app, it looks at all available cars, finds the closest one available, and sends that car to my GPS location. Oh, and if that car gets stuck in traffic, it automatically picks another car and sends that over

Uber completely revolutionized taxi services and is absolutely nothing like calling dispatch on a phone.

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Totally! The one and only time that I tried to get a taxi at my house, which is in a suburb of a major metro area in the US, I was told it would be a 45 minutes wait. I waited the 45 and nobody showed and I called again. 30 more minutes. No show. Now, I can have an Uber at my door in 10 minutes and I know what it will cost.

Agreed. In SF whenever I called cabs they often wouldn't show up at all. I suppose they found a fare before they got to me. So features like ratings and assigned cars and ability to check the status added by Uber are all huge improvements for my usage.

I've not anywhere argued that it hasn't been beneficial for people, but simply that it is not innovative.

Here, Uber is just another private hire taxi. They cannot pick up random people from the street (and be insured, anyway), so they would not be picking up random other fares on the way unless the dispatcher told them to. This is what has existed for a long time before Uber appeared, so replicating that elsewhere is not innovative surely?

>I've not anywhere argued that it hasn't been beneficial for people, but simply that it is not innovative.

And that’s what’s making you look like a dolt. Taxis in most of the world were (and mostly still are) unreliable gambles that vary from city to city. Calling on the phone and waiting for 40 minutes without live tracking and automatic rerouting for when the driver decides to stop for groceries is a completely different level of usefulness.

You just compared a flip phone to a smartphone (in more ways than one).

Before Uber there was an app I could use to book a taxi. That's one of the main reasons I don't think their app was innovative.

> This usually took at least 30-40m, if they arrived at all.

Not for me, I would and still do get cars faster using other firms. Uber says they're two minutes away and they come ten minutes later.

The only reason I use Uber is I get receipts I can push to my expenses.

That's fair, but understand that your city's taxi experience isn't necessarily typical, and also that Uber has the ability to make the experience nearly identical in all markets where they operate (that alone has value). For most markets, that turns out to be higher quality than the local option, but every now and then (like in your case), the reverse is true.

I've not said they don't have value, what I've said was the app wasn't innovative. To me it cannot be because something almost identical existed before, and it isn't a huge shift from telling someone where I am.

If the innovation is being a non-terrible taxi firm, then I think I stand by my point that it's because they were big enough to ignore the local rules

do you think big hits in tech are merely the first one to code the idea? proper execution and business maneuvering are arguably more important than being the first "app to book a taxi".

> do you think big hits in tech are merely the first one to code the idea?

No. Nor have I suggested anything like that.

If they're not the first to have an app like they started with, why would you describe it as innovative?

I think their important business decisions were ignoring local rules (as I've said) and building a brand.

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