[flyosity]

If Uber ends up going down in flames, unable to recover from the scandals and lawsuits, and Lyft prevails, it will be the most incredible change of fate in the business world this century or perhaps longer.

The future of automobiles and transportation is still being swirled about, and it feels like Uber's downfall has blown the game WIDE open, ready for anyone (maybe Uber, maybe Lyft, maybe Tesla, Google, Apple, an automaker) to just step in and take all the riches.

[hkmurakami]

Pardon me for being somewhat rude, but your perspective suggests that you're perhaps relatively young?

IBM's recent demise, Lehman Brothers going down under, Enron, Arthur Anderson / Worldcom, the dismantling of Japanese mega conglomerates by the GHQ, Apple's 90's turnaround, the death of workstation companies, deregulation of US airlines, are all orders of magnitude more impactful than if Uber dies and Lyft prevails.

[api_or_ipa]

Excellent examples. To push the point farther, the Dow Jones Industrial Index tracks a basket of 'best in breed' companies. With the exception of General Electric, every company listen in 1896 is no longer listed. That speaks nothing to the many that were listed and removed over the years. Big companies rise and fall, and we often forget the companies that fail all around us.

[shoo]

indeed, some of the companies listed on the dow jones index managed to run at a profit for one or more years.

[jackfrodo]

I don't quite understand. Why would they do that instead of just raise money from more investors?

[PMan74]

> IBM's recent demise

Somebody should let them know!

Certainly on a downward trend of late but ~80BN in revenues last year is far from dead

[hn_throwaway_99]

I'm assuming parent meant IBM's "relatively" recent demise. IBM lost many billions in the early 90s and was close to disaster, at the same time Microsoft (originally an IBM supplier!) was surging.

[flyosity]

When I said "change of fate" I meant reversal of fortunes. Not very often the #1 dominant company in an industry sinks and the #2 takes over, which is the scenario I was discussing. Not just a top company declining, but their direct competitor ascending as well.

[yathroaway]

Myspace

[nikcub]

If you're in the USA and keeping tabs of the controversies I think it is easy to overestimate Lyft and underestimate Uber.

Uber is in 100 more US cities than Lyft and 81 countries where Lyft isn't. I find that in large parts outside of the USA "Uber" is synonymous with ride sharing.

Uber bookings revenue is doubling each year[0], net revenue growth is outpacing growth in losses[1] and they claim to be profitable on a per-city basis in early markets[2]

Direct comparisons: Countries 82 (Uber) vs 1, Bookings: $20,000M (Uber) vs $1,400M, Growth: 100% (Uber) vs 250% (Lyft), Net revenue: $6,500M (Uber) vs 700M, Losses: $2,800M (Uber) vs $800M (Uber has much better margins and margin growth), Valuation: $70,000M (Uber) vs $6,000M, Revenue/Valuation: Uber 3.5x Lyft 4.28x

Not an insurmountable task, but Lyft have a long way to go and no track record or operations outside of the USA.

[0] http://fortune.com/2015/08/21/uber-bookings-double/

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-14/embattled...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/uber-profitable-in-hundre...

[cryptophreak]

Do we have any data to suggest that Uber is materially weakened? Do the negative headlines and social media posts necessarily translate into significant changes in consumer behavior?

[cthulha]

Does losing talent and having trouble finding executives count?

No COO, CFO and CMO for such a long time means the CEO was not doing his most important job: creating a high-functioning executive team.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-uber-leadership-gap/

You might think they're still strong in operations, but company-destroying risks rise every day the the leadership suite is in turmoil like this. And that's just internal risks: what about their competitors and antagonists?

[pducks32]

Disclaimer: I'm in the Bay Area and roots in Chicago. People are not turning in my experience and have never heard of any of these scandals; however, when I bring them up and really get into them I have noticed people without prompt switching to Lyft. I think people who use Apple Maps or Google Maps' ride sharing feature find it especially easy to switch.

[smt88]

There are articles showing them losing share to Lyft.

[jpatokal]

But has any of the press coverage translated into actual business impact? Uber's been all over the news in Silicon Valley's incestuous little bubble for the last few months, but the general public has a solid track record of continuing to use whatever service is cheapest and/or most convenient, which remains... Uber.

[mcgrath_sh]

I'm in Pittsburgh. Most of my friends have moved to Lyft due to Uber's "behavior." To be fair, due the trips we are taking are relatively infrequent and when we do, there is little cost difference between the two.

[panarky]

I don't know if it's possible for a company to change a culture that's this sick.

But it's almost certainly not possible to do it with the same CEO. A leave of absence is not sufficient.

[joering2]

Frankly I don't believe its possible with Arianna Huffington neither.

If you ever worked with her, you will clearly see shes a female type of Kalanick; the only difference he seems to love party, sex and alcohol and couldn't care about sexual harassment at his company; meanwhile Huffington is known for backstabbing employees (co owners too) and always gossiping behind others back just for fun and treat people like crap in general. In both examples, a normal company would not be able to thrive; and also look what happened with Huffington Post under her tensure; even AOL ceo did not want to work with her at some point.

Bottom line -- removing Kalanick is like rearranging seats on Titanic.

[curiousDog]

I think Amazon has a shot at taking over Uber or even entering this space. They already have a great logistics pipeline built out.

[danpalmer]

This is a really interesting point. Uber didn't get its valuation by aiming to be the world biggest taxi company, they got it by aiming to be the infrastructure fabric that underpins everything.

Amazon have started from a very different place, but apart from the user accessible vehicles they are nearly at the same point, with their recent efforts in Prime, groceries, etc.

I wonder whether Amazon will open up that infrastructure further to other companies. Arguably "fulfilled by Amazon" is already starting to do that.

[Applejinx]

Uber got it by aiming to be the most dominant, demonstrably aggressive and ruthless competitor there could ever be. It almost didn't matter what Uber proposed to do, it was in how they meant to do it and Travis personified that, and all the 'bad behavior' was read as good… by Wall Street standards… because it indicated a sharklike savagery that surely no other company could prevail against. This is why they got their valuation.

With Travis gone, the only people who will believe that's still the case are whatever committee is at the steering wheel. They will think they're great and totally capable of being as ruthless and fierce as Travis, which is why they are creating that situation. No other investors will agree: you can't replace someone like Travis with a committee.

[drewblaisdell]

If Uber dies and Lyft becomes the new market leader, who is the new underdog?

[r00fus]

Small-time taxi drivers.

[danpalmer]

Gett, Hailo, maybe Didi if/when they expand out of China.

[pishpash]

It will also be a tragedy. With Kalanick gone, Uber is already behaving like a conformist, viz. the recent headlines (1) "Uber co-founder: We’ve been too obsessed with growth" (what?); (2) "Uber is (finally) rolling out tipping" (just awful). That sounds just like Lyft and Lyft is not a worthy rival in any sense of the word.

[gordon_freeman]

Why Lyft is not worthy rival of uber? Pretty much wherever you can find uber in USA, you can find Lyft. And considering they have taken way less money from investors than uber and still doing as well tells me that Lyft's executives are not doing that bad after all!

[pishpash]

Besides being a coattail follower, on the key things that matter: transparent and market-based pricing, Lyft makes the wrong, paternalistic choice.

[pducks32]

In places like Chicago if you don't tip the driver they will give you a 1 star rating. Having in app tipping solves this problem.

[pishpash]

Sounds like a cesspool. Remind me to not visit Chicago.

[tluyben2]

Lyft is US only isn't it? How would that be a good thing?

[smt88]

Uber was already likely to lose. It was way behind in autonomous vehicle tech.

Also, it wasn't even close to profitable.

[necessity]

I believe that (much) more relevant than that is what regulators do with these services around the world. For the people it doesn't really matter if it's Uber or Lyft. We are already seeing a protectionist wave of regulations getting rid of affordable transportation throughout the developing and the developed world, I can only imagine that when self-driving cars actually hit the market for good it will be on the whole forbidden in some countries...

[em3rgent0rdr]

Lyft? That is just another corporate-controlled centralized system. I'd much prefer something along the lines of http://libretaxi.org/

[santoshalper]

Libretaxi sucks. I don't want to negotiate with the driver and I don't want to pay cash. In typical fashion, open source/FS people fail to understand what makes a product popular when they try to clone it.

Nobody gives a fuck about "Libre", I just want to get a fucking ride.

[marmaduke]

That's too reactive. The point is that there may be services we want (ride) on infrastructure we can inspect and control and we might want to have respect for the operators while we're at it. I see those as features which make execution more expensive and tend to attract less investment and thus not as well done, when done by volunteers in their spare time. That is a incentive problem, not an open source problem.

[sho]

It's not too reactive at all, it's precisely how I feel as well. I travel a lot in South East Asia and the absolute last thing I want is to have to bargain with the driver (100% of the time they will try to rip me off) or carry bundles of small notes at all times (100% of the time the driver will claim to have no change).

I have no idea who LibreTaxi is for, if anyone, but their marketing page makes me want to run a mile. Uber and grab have been a revelation for me in SEA and I use them exclusively.

[em3rgent0rdr]

I said "something along the lines of libretaxi". Not libretaxi. You can still do libre with a reputation system and without having to bargain for every ride.

[marmaduke]

you missed my point entirely

[dingo_bat]

To be fair, it's not very "libre" either if the only phone shown on the home page is an iphone.

[delroth]

> No credit cards. Drivers get paid directly with cash.

I can understand why some people might see this as a feature, but that's severely misunderstanding why people use services like Uber.

[tommorris]

Also, payment is very culturally specific.

In Brazil, Uber required drivers to accept cash payment having seen that it was successful in other countries like India. Suddenly carjackers realised that Uber cars were basically cash machines on wheels and so armed robbery, murder and mayhem ensued.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/brazils-love-affa...

[kissickas]

As a counterpoint, Careem, Uber's biggest competitor in the GCC, accepts cash. I love the system as they've handled it well - if the driver has no change, they just add it to your account for use on the next trip, with no pressure to tip. You can even run a negative balance although I'm not sure what the limit is.

[PhasmaFelis]

I really want to see free/open-source win, but it won't happen as long as people keep thinking that shouting "down with closed systems" is a substitute for a competitive product. Ideological purity isn't enough.

[askafriend]

Centralized systems have value, sometimes far more than open systems. The other way around is true also.

You can't automatically assume that closed systems are a bad thing.

[isatty]

    > No Credit Cards
    > Negotiating the price with a driver

No thanks!