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If you are referring to Uber the app, "Uber" had nothing to do with ego. The cab experience was poor, and the service was called UberCab to delineate a better cab experience. Cab++ if you wish.

They got sued for using the word "cab" in "UberCab", and just shorted the name to "Uber".

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The people who named it no doubt put much more thought into the name than we are, and I am confident they knew the implications of the word 'uber'; also, emember that it was founded by Travis Kalanick whose public actions seem to fit some of those implications.

Also compare the word 'uber', however you interpret it, with words like 'google', 'yahoo', 'GNU', 'quark', 'charmed', 'C', 'C++', etc. Those have wit, humor, and disarm ego. (In fairess, maybe there are similarly witty names now that I'm not thinking of?)

You are overthinking this by a wide margin. UberCab was being used with the same meaning of “Ubercool”.

And you are factually wrong: UberCab was created without Travis Kalanick, by Garrett Camp. Travis invested in UberCab 6 months later or so, and he became CEO as part of the deal.

Do your research please.

Is that not ego? "We're better than a cab".

It would be ego-less if they called it CabApp or something.

WeTriedOurBestAndHopeWeDidBetterThanRegularCabs™

"We are paying less tax and insurance than a cab"

All the other cabapp names are egoless

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