[Animats]

This is in addition to their new giant HQ in SF?

Uber has an awful lot of overhead for a taxi company.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/uber-new-hq/

[jedberg]

No no they aren't a taxi company. They are a marketplace that matches people selling space in their car with people who need space in a car.

Until they get their self driving cars, and then the are a transportation and logistics company.

But they definitely aren't a taxi company

[gozo]

Of course they are, everything else is just PR at the moment. That said, they are (the first?) global taxi company. No one is surprised that global retailers, like e.g. H&M, have huge headquarters.

[noer]

They're a company you can contact to dispatch a car to take you where you want to go that charges you by distance traveled. If that's not a taxi, I don't know what is.

[falsestprophet]

A taxi is a vehicle for hire that you can lawfully hail on the street.

[mfringel]

You've just described every taxi dispatcher on the planet, modulo a couple of rounding errors about medallions.

[gkoberger]

Uber has low overhead for a $50bn company.

They've already won vs taxis. Now they're going for courier services, buses, food delivery and even cleaning services. They aren't part of the sharing economy, they're trying to be the sharing economy.

[joelrunyon]

Where have you seen the cleaning services?

[gkoberger]

Rumor, but: https://twitter.com/om/status/444681883083735040

[mikeash]

"A taxi company" typically serves one city. Uber is more like 300+ taxi companies. Do they have over 300+ times the overhead of a normal taxi company?