> Do people remember what it was like before Uber?
Yes. In London there were tons of minicab companies. They were cheap and shitty, but they were there, and you could pay for better ones. There were also heavily regulated black cabs. Uber have probably increased the quality of the market, but at the cost of many more cars on the crowded streets, and the VC funding driving competitors out of business. Further, they fucked around evading rules and reduced safety for passengers by (for instance) failing to background check their drivers, failing to ensure adequate insurance etc. They were cheaper than most competitors when they started out, now I'm not so sure.
In Southampton, UK there were and still are multiple cab firms. They didn't really have apps. Now they do. The uber cars are usually cleaner and newer, but if you want service at a particular time, you still book the cab, because they'll send someone to you specially rather than just searching on a cron job. There is no real price difference.
In Perth, there were multiple cab firms, their cars were crappy and their apps still are. For a while uber was cheaper and more convenient, they drove some of the cab firms out of business. Now uber must not pay as much, because there are barely any drivers and half the time they don't even bother to take the job. If they do take the job, they often cancel it or just fuck around to try and make you cancel and trigger surge prices. Uber is now usually the expensive option. Cabs are resurgent and similar to how they ever were, which was actually fine.
Basically, as far as I can tell, Uber were 'good' because they threw VC money at everything. Now that's starting to dry up, they're getting unreliable because they can't keep attracting drivers. And frankly we should never have allowed them to use billions of investor dollars to distort world markets, nor allowed them to avoid tax by using an already well-worn excuse (oh they aren't employees!) in the first place.