[btown]

The alternative would be licensing as a taxi company everywhere, which would invite the same political battles with entrenched operators (only with less leverage, since you'd be fighting the battles before you had the user base). So conflict is inevitable with this business model.

[uhhhhhhh]

Ubers legal battles were because they didn't license, and thus got kicked out of multiple cities by violating their requirements.

By working with licensed drivers/companies or licensing their drivers, they would have avoided much of that problem, admittedly that would add to their revenue vs profit/yearly loss issues they have now. Lyft is in a similar boat, trying to lower loss-per-ride and get to a profitable state. It appears based on media reports that Lyft, despite not sharing many of the conflicting business approaches Uber used, is actually ahead of Uber at working its way to profitability.