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Comment by alecdibble | Hacker News Reader

So Uber should pass out flyers to all competitors before it moves into a town?

As long as good ethics are used, it is called business competition and is generally a good thing. Do you think Uber is doing anything unethical? From the parent link, it appears not, and some of the rules Uber pointed out seem arbitrary and downright anti-competitive.

What really pisses me off is when people try and use legislation as a competitive advantage. That is unethical and it does make them look like your description: "By the time the city & existing cab and livery drivers notice and want to do something about it, they've look like the bad guys, are anti-competetive and they've turned the public against them."

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No, I think you're missing my point.

Uber is doing this expecting the cities and existing players to get pissed off and try to stop them. And then they publicize the anti-competetive nature of it.

That's their strategy. Get local news to write about how the city & cabbies are trying to shut them down. It's great marketing.

And it benefits Uber not to talk to local government prior to launching as long as they follow the letter of the law.

This is a genius strategy. But if I were the CEO, it would cause me stress that all of my drivers in a given city might be forced to not work indefinitely because I'm not getting the OK first. Maybe that won't happen.

No other business has to ask the city if the city is planning on changing the laws to shut them down. Why do you expect Uber needs to do that? The fact that changes to laws are being proposed in order to shut Uber down proves that Uber is perfectly legal under the current laws, which means Uber is well within its rights to open up shop without asking permission. In fact, if Uber were public and I was a shareholder, I'd be pretty pissed-off if Uber actually asked for permission first, because that's just asking to be shut down.

Any sort of disruptive business will get lots of pushback and anticompetitive pressures from the existing incumbents. There's no reason why Uber needs to make it easier for someone else to block them from operating.

I think just like alecdibble, you're missing the point. sudonim isn't commenting on the ethics or legality of Uber's strategy, but putting him/herself in the Uber CEO's shoes and imagining the stress associated with executing on a strategy that depends on pissing powerful people off.

Again, it's a brilliant strategy, but might be a stressful experience if you're on Uber's side of the table.

Why should they be expected to "talk to local government" before starting? What other businesses have that expectation?

And what good could it possibly do? As far as I can tell, giving prior notice (though I think the idea that Uber could move in "stealthily" is kind of silly. They are hiring professional drivers from those cities, surely that hiring process attracts some attention.) could only harm them.

They did, in fact, talk to DC government several times before the first attempt to ban them (this is take 3):

http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/14/ubercommissioner/

You call it a marketing ploy. I see it simply as a reaction to anti-competitive behavior. What should Uber do? Not make a big deal about it? You really think they designed their business model just to bait cities to ban them so they can get a little "free press"? I think that if a business is trying to get another one shutdown using any other method than simply outperformance, that is a story that deserves to be on the news. It shows that there may be unethical or even illegal actions on the parts of legislators.

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