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.