[isawczuk]

It would be true if customer would be 100% loyal. Taxi businesses in my town have been profitable for years until uber-unprofitable companies decided to take their place. Put their logos in airports. now taxi businesses are dying. I have respect to 37signals and they are more successful than any of my endeavours, but in my opinion it's always about eating your own milking cow and building internally killers of your own product. Complete with your own product.

[robertlagrant]

It's not the unprofit, it's the fact that Uber's app, where you knew the price up front, it wasn't renegotiated at the destination, you could pay safely on your phone, you knew where your driver was, etc etc was all a million miles ahead of the awful experience of taking a taxi before Uber.

[JohnFen]

My town supports this. Uber and Lyft are present here, but the taxi companies are more popular than they are. The reason is because the taxi companies provide their own apps that give you the benefits that Uber's does.

[robertlagrant]

That's great, and IME Uber and Lyft's innovations have forced other taxi firms to up their game where it was happily languishing in the 1980s.