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by flexie 2666 days ago
Where I live, Uber is effectively banned and local alternatives are quietly doing much the same as Uber used to.

I don't see Uber being anywhere near beating anyone in Europe.

1 comments

Are the local alternatives based on an app or a traditional taxi service?
My little town has a traditional taxi service that now also has an app. Not nearly as polished as Uber but... who cares, it gets the job done (getting me a taxi).

The only thing Uber has is a nice network, so that when I travel, odds are I’ll land somewhere with Uber and not have to think about taxis.

I think the ultimate end solution might be something like Uber but offered to any willing/interested taxi company, akin to Amazon and its marketplace. Join it, you get a free user base + a modern app that handles a ton of stuff for you, but at the end of the day, you’re still your own taxi company and not locked into anything.

Or, alternatively, sell “Uber app as a service” to all taxi companies so that they won’t even have to think about building one. It doesn’t get the same network benefits but it would move things forward for smaller taxi firms.