That might work for cleaners, but not for rideshare, food delivery and vacation rentals, which probably account for the vast majority of the "gig economy".
For food delivery (at least takeout) and ride share, the app actually provides a real value; it handles matching drivers and customers who want to make a deal now, for a service that is not really super differentiated. It makes sense to stay in their ecosystem and it seems fair that they would be continuing to make a profit.
The problem with a food delivery network is that it should be a dumb network, not a big profit center. It should be like an ISP, with the food being the high value packets being delivered to you.
If you look at pre-UberEats times, each restaurant employed a couple of delivery drivers on scooters. Some might have shared those if the restaurants were on the same street, but that's about it.
During low times these drivers would laze around doing nothing, effectively wasting productivity, whereas during peak times, the restaurant didn't have enough drivers.
Having one delivery driver network for an entire city should have made things more efficient and cheaper. But because for example in Europe, JustEat-TakeAway and UberEats have inserted themselves as the middleman and crushed out all competition. Delivery has gotten more expensive and inconvenient because of it.
These days delivery costs €3-5 and there is a €15 delivery minimum. Before, no delivery charge and there was no official minimum. One time one of my friends order a 6-pack of cola, although I doubt they would have delivered that to the edge of the city.
Worst of it is, restaurants are not allowed to charge lower prices themselves than they offer on the app. On top of that, JustEat-TakeAway will make a branded store site on restaurantname.localdeliverycompany.com, of which they get a cut versus if you used the restaurant's own site.
If delivery is more expensive, more inconvenient and often slower now than before 2015, what 'real value' was added?
I wonder why the apps out-competed it. Delivery apps are often not even supported officially by the restaurants, right? It’s just sort of like—if somebody comes in for the pickup and gives the right name, they don’t typically care and will just give the delivery guy your order. So it isn’t like some vendor lock-in thing, seems just like network effect from the users or something…
You order on Uber Eats, Toast, Seamless, and they set the prices pushing them up.
It’s a completely parasitic market and if a restaurant does not participate it’s squeezed out due to not being able to compete with online ordering.
You notice how you can’t just order from xyzpizza.com and choose 1-7 vendors to deliver the pizza? They should class actioned into the depth of hell.
Imagine going to Nike.com, but Nike has to sell on the usp website at the ups price because they deliver the last mile package…
That's basically how retailing worked before direct-to-consumer? Even with Nike you can get their goods through a variety of distribution channels.
Pizza is already sold, the last mile delivery should have zero impact on its retail. Right now the last mile delivery has a near monopoly on retail of a restaurant. Pretending that toast/grubhub/seamless somehow benefit the customer is pure rubbish.
This was not my experience. Hardly any restaurants had delivery other than pizza.
> If delivery is more expensive, more inconvenient and often slower now than before 2015, what 'real value' was added?
More expensive maybe, but I strongly disagree that it's more inconvenient or slower.
> This was not my experience. Hardly any restaurants had delivery other than pizza.
Your parent commenter appears to be European. Europe enjoys better city living in many ways than the United States does because the US is relatively underpopulated. (On the other hand, urban Americans have much larger homes.)
But the standard Dutch takeaway food has always been Chinese (Dutch Chinese-Indonesian, actually), and I think even now that might still be more takeaway than delivery.
> But the standard Dutch takeaway food has always been Chinese (Dutch Chinese-Indonesian, actually),
Well, those and things like spareribs, burgers, kapsalon, etc., which makes it a rather broad spectrum of takeaways that already had delivery.
In case you didn't know, Takeaway = Thuisbezorgd (or rather, the other way around). And in the 2010s, Thuisbezorgd and Just Eat had a pretty active fight for marketshare, until they decided the most profitable course of action was for Just Eat to operate in the countries where it held a majority marketshare, and Takeaway to do likewise, creating regional monopolies. Later on they merged, which any sane regulatory agency would have blocked.
What is interesting is that UberEats hasn't tried to compete on price at all. They charge similar, semi-extortionate prices. They just offer delivery from more and more upscale places.
Which food delivery network has big profit margins?
Exactly.
Networks (markets) operators must be prohibited from competing on their own networks.
Apple's App Store must be spun off as a separate entity.
Amazon cannot offer their own competing products on their Marketplace.
Google must divest their digital advertising from their search engine (or vice versa).
Doctorow & Giblin's Chokepoint Capitalism is a terrific take on our current rentier economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokepoint_Capitalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Games_Corp._v._Nintendo_....
Nintendo was the first widespread closed platform.
I usually find the place I'd like to stay on AirBnB and then google the title & description and the property management website usually pops up.
Since they don't need to pay AirBnB, its usually 20% cheaper via their website or calling.
AirBnB takes an obscene amount for doing almost nothing.
Maybe it's selection bias but 80%+ of the airbnbs I stay at are mom and pop establishments with 0-2 other properties listed on their profile. I doubt they have enough scale to bother set up a separate booking website for their properties. That said I have noticed hotels advertising on airbnb, but they represent a small fraction (ie. <10%) of listings that I see.
This simply doesn't work.
I'm half a century old, go on vacation several times each year, and it happened only once in my lifetime that I wanted to go to the same rental as before. I pulled the card from the owner, called him, and found out that it's not free at the time I can go there.
I also don't know anyone who was in the same rental more than once.
So yes, Booking, Check24 and similar always take their cut in my case.
I do have some relatives that like to rent the same place year-after-year for family events, for whatever reason. They are a little picky so I think they just like to go back to a place if it worked out. I’m actually not sure if they go through apps at this point, or what…
Once again, "I don't do that" is not the same as "no one does that".
That value doesn't persist over time because you already know the maid. So there's an expectation that you make a direct arrangement with her.
I know several people who tried this and the cleaner said no. I think (not sure) the cleaner signed some kind of contract/agreement with the website not to do that and worries that if they are discovered they will be banned from the site and thus lose the other 90% of their income. Dunno how rational that fear is.
Apps seem to be very good at bringing people together initially, it is up to us to develop relationships after that, and apps are not as good for that.
Well. Communication apps are! Signal et el.
Households pay $200 a year, they get 2 credits. Each credit grants you a stay at another member's house. Anytime someone stays at your house, you earn a credit.
I think something like this, if it finds traction, is really cool. Of course, that probably means you probably wouldn't be able to use this network to stay in some random remote area, but if it's in a host happens to be in an area you want to stay in, it can be even cheaper than AirBnB.
Caveat: your SO must not be allergic to going to the same place more than once in a lifetime. My ex was.
When you call up your local plumber, you are doing everything under the counter.
Same for food delivery.
Very different for a cleaner: you never need a cleaner "right now", you can schedule it.
Sometimes you want a ride right here right now, other times you want "a ride to the airport at 6am tomorrow".
Uber let's you "schedule rides" but that doesn't actually do anything to guarantee a ride. You could wind up without a driver if you're unlucky.
Directly contacting the person driving you, 12 hours in advance, is a much better way to guarantee a ride.
...if they haven't had any car trouble, and haven't quit providing car service, and are intending to work then, and haven't scheduled another ride for the same time, and are willing to schedule something when they don't know where their unscheduled fares are going to leave them just before.
The apps that match workers with customers are actually doing something useful. The main problem is that people keep trying to get them to be considered employers, which increases their costs, and then those costs get passed on so that more of what you pay goes to overhead and less of what you pay actually goes to the worker.
I suspect that delivery apps crafted a moat by building a network effect with cheap prices, and now people just use them out of habit. If you know what kind of food you want it can be cheaper just to order directly from the restaurant, and you often get better service. Our local Indian restaurant has a 10% discount for directly ordering through their own app website instead of a delivery app.
I think mainly it helps property owners skirt the whole “I’m a landlord” thing and all the legal obligations it entails.