Yeah, even if the value and markets drop by 50%, it's still crazy. But long term Uber has potential due to their network and diversity now with other offerings.
So, like the hardest thing uber has done, I think? is that they've convinced local governments to not enforce taxi regulations.
I think this was really hard, and I think it might be durable; I mean, I am generally kinda leftish and support a well-regulated market, but I also heavily use ridesharing in a way I never used taxi services.
But, while those things are hard and valuable... they aren't exclusive to uber. I mean, ride sharing services are highly location based; like less than 1% of my uber use is done outside of the bay area (and most of the time, in those cases, I'd be willing to pay taxi rates and deal with taxi inconveniences)
I personally have fantasised about building a ride-sharing federation system, or a ride sharing clearinghouse system; You'd hook up your local ride sharing co-op with my app, which would allow the customer to input source and destination addresses, and then get quotes from all interested providers.
So.. what I'm saying is that while I see a lot of value in what uber built, I don't really see how they can prevent another company from moving in (on a per-market basis) and grabbing up all their customers.
I mean, I already use both uber and lyft with a preference for whichever seemed cheaper last time I checked. That doesn't seem like a business with a lot of room to improve margins.