[rpmcmurphy]

If you want a forecast of how ridesharing companies will settle out, tear the route map out of an inflight magazine. There is no global airline, but many regional airlines that provide international connectivity to other regional airlines.

It makes sense that each major region will have 2 or 3 dominant operators including local taxis. In the long term, a local operator will have advantages due to better local knowledge, government relations, etc.

Roaming agreements will take the equivalent of Star Alliance, and primarily of value for international travelers. Most users will interact with their preferred local operator. Note this has been tried already, but failed due to parties not trusting each other, but will probably be tried again once territories are more nailed down.

[bsiemon]

Does the cost in maintaining/paying for hub airports factor into why airlines are regional? For example southwest has service over most of the US because they use the older/cheaper airports vs United has hubs that don't heavily overlap with American. I don't see the parallel with ride sharing here.

I think Uber/Lyft can take over the whole US since they don't need to maintain much supporting infrastructure. Plus they can get economy of scale in marketing.