Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

The Streisand effect at work. I can see all those people thinking: these cabs are blocking me, I must find that one company that still drives, what was it called again?

Uber will be picking up a ton of business in London because of this. I imagine some bottles are being uncorked at Uber HQ because of this spectacularly stupid response. It's never clever to try to resolve your commercial disputes by punishing your paying customers.

And technically it's not an 'Uber protest' but an 'Anti-Uber protest'.

View on HN

Since the strikes were first announced last month, downloads of Uber’s smartphone app have skyrocketed, according to the technology research company App Annie, which tracks smartphone downloads.
In Britain, Uber’s app rose to the second spot on Tuesday in the travel section of Apple’s download store, while it ranked fifth on Google’s Play store for phones using the Android operating system.

A similar trend is appearing in other places in Europe.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/taxi-protests-again...

Looks like it's already happening. I have a hard time seeing this end well for the taxi companies.

I don't think their goal is to influence the people; rather, it's to influence the government. I mean, it looks like the protests have some power - after 3 tube strikes, the 4th was cancelled, I assume they made some kind of a deal.

Yes, but there is no viable alternative for the tube, for taxis there is. It's a nice illustration of cutting of the nose to spite the face.

Not quite sure. Unlike US ( at least according to HN readers experience ), most of the booking side features of Uber have been available for years in London. GPS tracking, pre-pay, price compare, ...

I guess the problem is on the driver side. Black Cabs had the same battle a decade ago with the minicabs / private hire. The result have not been bad from a consumer point of view: all minicab service now have mandatory car inspection, driver and insurance inspection checks. I guess Uber style is able to workaround and that pisses off the cabbies ?

Uber is not cheaper than the taxi service I have been using for years. Not quite sure what's the business model of Uber in London and why would people rush to it.

note: The main difference between regular black cabs and other regulated taxi services is that only the Black Cab can pick people up in the street and at Station and Airport pickup points. Minicab need to be booked in advance, which nowadays, means the taxi will come at your GPS coordinates within 10-20 min.

Edit: well according to other comments, it happens. I guess that's why I will never be a startup billionaire, I don't understand people.

I would be pissed too if I would be tightly regulated, but my concurrent wouldn't be because "they are on the internet". It strikes me as deeply unfair, Uber is basically a cab on demand - no difference in service to a regular cab.

Why shouldn't they be regulated ?

Maybe a better question is why should the black cabs be regulated so much?

>> The Streisand effect at work. I can see all those people thinking: these cabs are blocking me, I must find that one company that still drives, what was it called again?

There are literally hundreds of private hire services in London, so Uber are not anywhere close to being the 'one company left driving'

However this is free publicity for them, all the same, yes.

It looks like Uber hasn't activated the surge pricing either... Maybe the requests haven't crossed a threshold, maybe they disabled it on purpose for some time. I'm curious, but we'll probably not find out.

(I think I see more cars on the map than usual though)

My thought exactly. Last time I was in London Uber didn't seem to have that many cars (I think they just had Uber Lux). Hopefully that increases quickly!

This must have been a while ago. You rarely have to wait more than a few minutes for a car.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com