[emodendroket]

Uber is an unlicensed livery service with a smartphone app; I don't know why everyone is pretending they're providing such an innovative and new service. If Uber is allowed to operate in blatant disregard of the law, the law should be changed so their competitors are afforded the same privilege. Alternatively, Uber should be made to comply to the laws their competitors have to.

This article doesn't even get into it, but beyond background checks, their not having medallions is a huge, unfair advantage; their labor practices are exploitative and probably illegal; and their insurance policies are not adequate.

[javajosh]

Uber created a marketplace and provided both buyers and sellers with a tool to participate in that market with minimal friction, mainly by taking advantage of GPS radios in people's devices. I, for one, consider this to be rather innovative and clever.

(Note that you can minimize anything with word choice. "Google is just a web spider that looks at links," or "Clojure is just a lisp that runs on the JVM," etc.)

[ulfw]

How is this 'market place' any different from the old school calling-a-taxi company and they radio in "Hey, there is a customer on the corner of 3rd and Broadway" and then the taxi goes there to pick you up?

It's incremental. Not innovation.

[dyeje]

Regardless of how innovative they are, they're breaking the law.

[baddox]

> I don't know why everyone is pretending they're providing such an innovative and new service.

I'm not pretending, I'm reporting empirical observations. Uber provides a service that is really nice, and significantly changed the way I transport myself around town. It is empirically an innovative and new service.

[emodendroket]

It's an iteration on the call-a-cab model, where you use your smartphone instead of getting on the horn and it takes advantage of your GPS. An incremental improvement that, frankly, some other livery service could easily do without breaking the law (I understand that more of them are offering these kinds of apps now).

[baddox]

> An incremental improvement that, frankly, some other livery service could easily do without breaking the law (I understand that more of them are offering these kinds of apps now).

Yes, there are more of them offering these kinds of apps now, after Uber and its competitors entered the market. That's pretty decent evidence that the laws regulating competition in taxi markets stifle innovation.

[emodendroket]

You think no one would have thought of the idea of "livery service... but with an app" if there weren't a company just flouting laws about licensing? I think that's unlikely.