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In my experience, if there is an easy way, low risk for a company to make more money, then they will do it. So why haven't Amazon, Google, or such done so already? Do they just hate money? Reasonable answers include: - Google and friends don't perceive the ride-sharing market to be a profitable market to enter, in which case Uber may have problems, but competition from Google, Amazon, et all is not one of them. - It actually isn't so simple to just "spin up" such a service. It would require a large investment in terms of development, regulatory hurdles, and marketing just to get a foot in the door, with a high level of risk that the effort doesn't succeed (see most all business ventures ever). Uber has many problems. But competition from Google, Amazon, et all is not one of them. Lyft? Yes. Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and so on? No. |
Most tech companies have made their billions by automating processes and undercutting the old school competition. If you can't automate driving you can't build a strong competitive advantage against traditional taxi businesses.
Uber realizes this and they're willing to do anything, no matter how unethical, to get self driving vehicles first. That will be the true market disruption, and likely winner-take-all because you will instantly have such a gigantic cost advantage.
That's why you see Ubers competitors all working on self-driving. They're trying to leapfrog the next obvious evolution of the transport business.