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Comment by crdoconnor | Hacker News Reader

Uber isn't a technological advancement. Its core competence is lobbying and business development, not android and ios development.

It probably wouldn't be a bad thing if most cities just banned uber and created their own apps (or hired a company to do it for them). The network effects in the taxi market are so strong that one company will inevitably end up being a monopoly.

Once the monopoly is locked in the winning company will just milk it for all its worth, simultaneously raising prices and crushing wages. That's bad for everybody (except them).

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Not even that. It's core competence is to publicly break the law on an unprecedented scale for mainstream company and get away with it.

1. Maybe Uber doesn't look like a technological advancement compared to Google, but Uber is an enormous technological advancement over the status quo in the industry.

2. Uber is breaking the very foundations of the monopolization of the taxi industry. The only monopoly they will maintain moving forward is through customer loyalty based upon perceived value. If Uber falters, there is very little protecting them from a competitor gobbling up their market share.

>If Uber falters, there is very little protecting them from a competitor gobbling up their market share.

Which taxi company's app are you going to use as a passenger? The one with 5 drivers within a 5 minutes' drive, or the one with 1 driver, 25 minutes away?

Which taxi company will you sign up with as a driver? The one which has customers everywhere or the one which doesn't?

Why pretend that network effects do not exist in this industry?

Sure would be nice if it were just about customer service and value, but it isn't. It's about network dominance.

Circa 2006: Whose social networking web site are you going to use, the one where nobody goes to it like Facebook, or the dominant one, Myspace?

Things change quickly when only network effects are stopping competition in a fluid market where all you need to do is download an app to become a user or go through a short process as a driver.

Uber has eliminated many of the tools used by the monopolists. Have they eliminated the value of reputation and high availability? No, but nobody said they had.

Well said.

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