No. They've killed taxis, and they're way more convenient. Now their pricing will rise to match the actual business and the era of under-cost ride hailing will end.
Their food delivery business will continue to battle it out with the other contenders until the market consolidates.
> Zillow
Realty sucks due to the MLS monopoly. Redfin is trying to break free of this. We'll see how it goes. In any event, modern home shopping almost always begins on one of these "tech" realty sites.
> meal kits
Anything with "kit" or "club" in the name is going to wither up and die.
For all their faults, Uber/Lyft/etc. did make hailing a ride using your phone a much better experience than cabs in many cities. Not for everything; I still use a car service for airport rides.
Sometimes. If you know the price it's obviously easy to compare. I do happen to know taxi prices from a few airports to central areas and Uber used to always be cheaper. Significantly cheaper years ago. Today it's a crap shoot and the taxi's are often faster since you don't have to wait. If the taxi is no more than 5$ more expensive then I take the taxi. I'd say it's about 50-50. Sometimes the Uber is a good deal ($10 or so) cheaper.
I have not taken a taxi or Uber for years but had to take 3 in the last few months. First a ten minute ride for £6 (UK) felt like what I'd have expected to pay a taxi 20 years ago.
Then a 35 minute ride in traffic for £11 feels like it should break some minimum wages laws after overheads are considered.
Finally a 70 minute ride for 6 through city traffic costing £45. At which point it's on par with public transport costs (trains).
I just use my local firm.
Why? And does this include non tech like Dollar Shave Club?
[1] https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/strategy/articles/uni...
[2] https://www.retaildive.com/news/unilever-sells-razor-subscri...
In your area.
> Now their pricing will rise to match the actual business and the era of under-cost ride hailing will end.
Fortunately the barrier to entry is extremely low. Now practically all taxi companies I know use apps (with varying level of user friendliness, with at least one superior to the one by Uber). So I think Softbank and the Saudis will be screwed again in the end. I kind of pity them because even if everybody is telling them the same they don't have any choice, they can't just take their money out and admit defeat now that Uber is a household name.
The last few times I've tried to use Uber, immediately after matching with a driver they'll message me telling me to cancel the trip because they don't want to go where I'm going. When I refuse, they'll play chicken and drive around in circles refusing to come pick me up and refusing to cancel themselves if they don't want the job, trying to make me pay the cancellation penalty rather than them. When I fly into YVR, it's so much more convenient to walk to the taxi stand and get a ride home within a few minutes for $50, than to order an Uber, wait 20 minutes for it to arrive, and pay $60-80 for the privilege.
Would we say that nasdaq or the NYSE cause trading to suck? Because listing services are just the real estate equivalent: a market. I don’t think the public fully appreciates how these services came about to reduce information asymmetry in North American real estate - many countries don’t even have listing services. We pay for their existence as realtors, you the public benefit in information that once upon a time only existed in the private files of realtors. I can’t begin to imagine why you think Zillow is being held back by listing services or why you would hold Redfin up as some kind of model.
If you're selling, there's an enormous pressure to get listed on MLS to get picked up. And then you're opted into paying middlemen.
Realtors will pressure sales, sometimes against buyers' or sellers' interests.
Realtors earn more in areas of higher home prices -- sometimes 2-5 times more -- , despite the workload being fungible across the state in which they practice.
Realtors are like travel agents, except extremely expensive, and a near market monopoly.
> We pay for their existence as realtors
Oh, you're a realtor!
> I can’t begin to imagine why you think Zillow is being held back by listing services or why you would hold Redfin up as some kind of model.
What do you think would happen if Zillow and Redfin could scrape MLS without restriction? Recent data -- not the days to months of stale info that is par for the course with MLS.
What if they could use this MLS data and also allow for sellers to post on their platforms without a realtor representative?
Because that's what should happen. That's an efficient market.
There is still much information asymmetry in NA real estate as many metropolitan regions may feature 2, 3, or more MLSs. The state of Georgia has 25 MLSs in total, of which few, if any, share their listings with each other. So an agent in Atlanta who is a member of FMLS, has to pay $300 or more (plus a broker paying $800+) to become a member of the Golden Isles MLS if they have a client that wants to sell in Savannah, or even if they themselves want to buy in that area.
Zillow is what helps reduce this information asymmetry on a national scale, but they have to pay licensing fees to these individual MLSs/NAR to access that information. As NAR requires agents to list properties on their local MLS (and advocates against posting on other sites separately), NAR creates a market where Zillow is reliant on them, and NAR becomes the arbiter of who has access to what information. Information that, for no reason, should really be remaining available to the general public.
Doesn't this mean that buyer pays for their existence?
I want to know where you are because it seems like Ubers are already equivalent to taxis in pricing.
Netflix may lose a ton of money QoQ, but they still make money for every new subscription.
In hindsight it seems obvious that the company was way over-valued, there aren't many efficiencies of scale or entry barriers; anyone with enough money to furnish an office and commit to a five-year lease can open a coworking space. Lots of people said so at the time too. I wonder if they would have been more successful if they hadn't gone the tech-VC route and become a "boring" real-estate business.