
Oracle’s Larry Ellison Calls Uber and WeWork ‘Almost Worthless’ - ycombonator
https://www.barrons.com/articles/oracles-larry-ellison-calls-uber-and-wework-almost-worthless-51568924122
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jgwil2
Neither of these companies is actually adding any value at all as far as I can
tell. Uber is undercutting taxis/transit with investor-subsidized rides and
still has no idea how it's going to turn a profit unless it becomes the only
ride in town. WeWork is pure middleman with some good branding. It amazes me
that people believe these valuations. However, I can't agree with the cat
comment; I'm sure Uber engineering are tackling tough technical problems.

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sokoloff
I think Uber (and Lyft) are absolutely adding value. I now regularly take ride
shares when I would previously have driven or _extremely reluctantly_ taken
cabs. I also talk to my rideshare drivers and the platforms provide some much
needed cashflow (and perhaps day-filling) for people who seem genuinely happy
to avail themselves of the income opportunity provided.

I see no reason to think that those two companies couldn't be quite profitable
in their core businesses in their established cities. (I think they already
are.)

That said, their valuations in the market are comically/insanely/unjustifiably
high, but that's quite different from saying they "add no value".

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WhompingWindows
They may add value vs taxis, but would Uber or Lyft add value vs any other
startup taxi service?

Expanding further, How about a taxi-app you and I could sit down and hack out?
How much value-add is there in an Uber or Lyft vs what we could do?

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JohnFen
In my area, they add no real value over the standard taxi companies. Literally
the only advantage to them is that they're cheaper (which is an artificial and
unsustainable difference). Everything else they do is also done equally well
by the cab companies.

That may be why there aren't an increasing number of Uber and Lyft drivers
here, but the taxi companies are expanding.

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avn2109
In your area, do taxi companies operate a service "Lift Line" or the uber
equivalent, in which you share a taxis with strangers who are going in a
similar direction?

I have never seen a non-app taxi service do this, and it's a real genuine
technology enabled value add. Is it 50 billion bucks worth? Probably not. But
it isn't 0 either.

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jbarberu
I grew up with something like this. We called them buses, they were pretty
cool :)

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rossdavidh
Well I've been pretty negative about Uber and WeWork up to now, but if Larry
Ellison is against them, maybe it's time to reconsider.

Kidding, I'm kidding. Sort of.

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trey-jones
He isn't the only ones to make that assessment either. I think you will find
this to be a common opinion among people who are paying attention.

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jayess
I feel like many people don't remember a few short years ago when your options
after a night of drinking were to call a friend, wait an hour for a taxi that
might arrive and definitely doesn't take credit cards, or drive home drunk.

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fabiofzero
I hate to agree with this asshat, but he's right.

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sam_lowry_
Oracle Linux, its flagship database and many of their products are utterly
worseless.

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hugofirth
I don't like Oracle any more than the next person, but this just isn't true at
all. Oracle is a robust product which fills an important part of any technical
stack. Building and supporting databases is hard.

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rb808
Now that we've nearly migrated everything off Sparc & Oracle DB I'm ready to
declare Oracle almost worthless too. At last.

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imglorp
Considering how often they sue their customers, increase prices after lockin
is established, triple their support fees, etc etc. one might consider Oracle
less than worthless. Sometimes it's a liability.

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paulsutter
At first I thought Uber will be a great business charging 20% of rides if they
can ramp up to many millions of riders.

Now they squeeze drivers harder and harder for bigger and bigger percentages.
Yet they are losing money faster and faster.

The problem is they’ve hired armies of very talented people, each one-upping
the next on initiatives to screw drivers a little worse, or create some lame
promotion, and pretty soon you have a ruthless company that is also drowning
in expenses and headcount.

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mrweasel
The is a valid point to Ellison comment regarding loyalty. If you don’t care
about profit, like Uber, then you can undercut your competitors. Neither
drivers nor customers would care if Uber suffers, if they can get a better
deal else where.

The technology also isn’t special enough that it alone can support the massive
value of Ubers stock.

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paggle
Both of these companies provide a valuable service, and in Uber’s case a
massively world changing one. Even if these companies only end up being worth
single digit billions, they are still great companies independent of Saudi
money pumping valuations into the absurd.

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sonr
Uber provides great value to people like me who can't afford the burden of
having a car and driving and only need a car maybe 20% of the time for various
occasions. However, if Uber had to charge rates that would make them a real
profit, people like me will simply no longer be able to afford it. We would go
back to walking, biking, or taking the bus.

Just my 2 cents here.

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rdlecler1
Last time I used Uber? this week. Last time I used coworking space? This week.
Last time I used Oracle? ...

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cjarrett
Last time you used a service backed by a service run likely by oracle?
Multitudes of times this week.

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rdlecler1
And most of those are legacy companies that are in their sunset.

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Udik
> [Uber has] an app my cat could have written

The other day on HN's frontpage was an article ("Software architecture is
overrated") in which the author mentioned something that made me shudder:

"Rewriting the Uber app was a project that a few hundred engineers worked
simultaneously on, porting existing functionality to a new architecture."

I keep not understanding how it is possible that companies whose core business
is very far from IT (e.g. taxi and ride sharing for Uber, or television for
Netflix) can be considered high-tech companies and take pride in investing
inordinate amounts of money on engineering. What is the point? What is Netflix
doing in the company of Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google?

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simonblack
Uber is good only for Uber itself and (temporarily till the collapse) the
customers. It is a SCAM for drivers and investors.

caveat emptor.

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dshuang
outline [https://outline.com/TfLjdh](https://outline.com/TfLjdh)

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nunchuckninja
Isn't he a director of former?

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CaptainZapp
Shortet some stock Larry, didn't we?

