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Comment by buro9 | Hacker News Reader

How does it increase demand for taxi services?

If your answer is by making it dramatically cheaper by externalising the costs of running a sustainable taxi business... then how does having a greater number of people employed on wages that they cannot afford to live on benefit anyone?

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It makes it easier to order a taxi. For instance in the case of Germany, I've sometimes walked a distance simply because I'm not sure if my German is good enough to handle the phone call to the taxi dispatcher, or just because I don't know the number of the taxi company/dispatcher/order central. With an app, I know how to use it.

I kinda suspect most taxi dispatchers in Germany will speak English.

Also if you have an app then you will have Internet and could just google taxi + city name

I very much doubt that. In large cities like Berlin or Hamburg they will but in larger cities you can usually just hail a taxi.

That is very very lame excuse. Because it suggests that you are unable to use Google and your preferred App store.

There is an App for it, called "Taxi Deutschland" (how obvious is THAT?) https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/taxi-deutschland/id454467694...

There is even a German wide number, which works in any major city: 22456 from you cell including text service http://www.22456taxi.de/

Thanks for the Taxi Deutschland hint. Unfortunately that app freezes on startup in my Android phone (I just get the screen with a selection of tutorial or starting app, but it locks up there.)

The app seems to be in German only, and it is of course Germany-specific. I can deal with that pretty OK but not all potential users can. Uber uses the same app for any country.

(Downloading an app local to a country while roaming there may be a rather expensive idea, BTW.)

How do you know that people can't live on the wages you are talking about? Why would people drive for Uber if they aren't profiting enough from the job?

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