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Comment by nabdab | Hacker News Reader

Uber didn’t transform the World. They offered cheaper taxis. Now wework actually transformed the world by bringing cheaper and flashier rental office space which has revolutionized the way most people use rental office space... /s Though in truth, neither did anything of notice. They used VC to undercut the market in a non-sustainable fashion.

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Yes, Uber did use VC to undercut the market. Yes, they went around taxi regulations and labor laws.

But Uber was the first to successfully deliver taxi via app, which did actually transform the world.

Did you take a taxi any time before uber came along? Unless you’re in a major city (NY, LA, London), or are somewhere like an airport, you’d need to call them, potentially hours in advance in rural areas, and organize a pick up. Knowing if you should tip or not was always confusing, the fares were expensive, and you had no real way to address grievances against the driver, unless they do something illegal and get pulled over.

Nowadays, almost every taxi company has an app, which emulates all the same functionality as Uber. Uber’s way of changing the world was one of user experience and logistics. Not the actual transportation, which as you call out, existed long before.

Sure. Uber definitely did better taxi dispatch. But if Kalanick had kept working on Red Swoosh, does anybody really believe taxi dispatch today would be just like it was in 2005?

I'd say no. The cab industry was already tracking vehicle GPS circa 2005: http://www.taxi-library.org/mccurdy.htm

Google Maps Android launched in 2008. It doesn't take a genius to say, "What if..." And people did. Like this 2010 paper about experiments with Java apps to do taxi dispatch in Singapore: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dddc/21e65523932240164d2bb4...

So people are giving Uber credit for something that would have happened anyhow. And they're doing that because Kalanick was the one most willing to burn money and break laws, not because he was such a creative genius.

Uber did not just offer cheaper taxis. A taxi company has staff and cars that cost money to own, run, and maintain which effectively means a taxi company any never meet peak demand and make a profit.

Uber can meet demand since they don't own the cars nor the staff. The system automatically scales, something taxis can't do.

That is the innovation, not apps. Plenty of taxi companies all over the world had apps before Uber even existed.

That wasn't actually Uber's innovation. Ubercab's notion was to use limos, etc.

Taxis only really worked in a few large US cities before Uber.

Now I can get an Uber almost anywhere.

Uber coverage is still fairly limited with plenty of cab companies operating in areas they don’t. https://www.uber.com/global/en/cities/

In 2012 there where 233,900 cabs in the US which seems limited, but they would work very long hours. Uber’s actual change was mostly around increasing peak availability, but not nessisarily total availability as 1/2 of their drivers average 1 to 15 hours each week.

I didn't check exhaustively but I looked at all the cities in South Carolina (the state that I am from) in that list and if you click through you'll see that the areas they are talking about actually pretty much cover the whole state.

If that's getting done for SC (a relatively un-dense state) I think they're covering pretty much everywhere in the US.

TBH I think the page you linked to is more about SEO than about Uber's actual coverage.

Can you tell me a specific place that has good coverage from cabs where Uber doesn't operate?

For larger areas I am not seeing Charleston WV on their list of cities. Though this would be easier if they showed a single map across the US.

Think smaller, Charles town WV official population 5,957 has taxi service. Edit: that was under the Baltimore map even though DC was closer. https://www.uber.com/global/en/cities/baltimore/

Fair enough. There are indeed some very small towns where Uber hasn't changed anything. Despite that, I stand by my assertion that the company changed the world in a real way.

I also think they'll get the the Charles Town WVs of the world at some point.

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