

Uber Will Not Achieve a Monopoly [pdf] - johnloeber
http://johnloeber.com/w/uber.pdf

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ryanajon
"The ridesharing space does not offer advantages to economies of scale" \-
efficiencies of scale in ridesharing are massive; more consumers means a more
liquid marketplace and less downtime for drivers (idle time or time-in-transit
to a passenger)and more drivers means shorter wait times and increased
reliability in car availability. Beyond the improved consumer experience,
there's real $ value creation resulting from these efficiencies that can lead
to increased revenue/unit of time for drivers, decreased fares for passengers
or increased commission for the ridesharing platform.

~~~
johnloeber
Those are very valid points, and they certainly apply at the moment. However,
I think that this ceases to be an issue when meta-rideshare services begin to
emerge, which I think is (technologically) inevitable.

What I think we will see is that a driver will use a meta-rideshare to be
available on _all_ ridesharing services (Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, etc.) just in
order to maximize his/her rides per hour.

The same for users, who will use a meta-rideshare to query all ridesharing
services in order to get a ride as quickly/cheaply as possible.

A great analogy for this is in airlines: yes, some airlines are bigger than
others and consequently have certain advantages. But most customers use flight
search engines (Google Flights, Kayak, etc.) in order to find the
cheapest/best flights.

The only counter-argument to this would be that users would have some sort of
brand preference for choosing Uber every time rather than using a meta-
rideshare to find the chapest/fastest ride. But such brand loyalty is unlikely
too emerge: (1) Uber's public image is far too tainted, and (2) it's very hard
to differentiate Uber's core product (seat in a car) from that of the
competitors.

