They had two years to adjust their businesses for a proposition approved by voters. They chose to spend nine figures fighting it in the press and the courts.
If California lawmakers are using this as negotiating tactic that's cool with me - but I'm not sure why we wouldn't expect Uber or Lyft to negotiate as well.
To me, it proves that investors don't have the appetite to fund an underdog fight against the two large companies. There are ethical alternatives (at least half a dozen when I last checked a couple years ago), but they're slow-growing. The fact that the conversations seem to default to assuming there are no other alternatives already speaks volumes about consumer mentality.
"You had years to plan for us removing 95% of your business!" is quite the argument.
Why is this getting downvoted? The strategy seems fairly obvious: by threatening to end service, they're trying to scare voters (and the legislature) into repealing this law.
Uber and Lyft could, under this law, continue to operate in a legal, legitimate manner, no longer relying on the legal loopholes that this law closed. The fact that they would rather shut down entirely than follow their own state's laws is deeply disturbing.