

Uber and Lyft Have Become Indistinguishable Commodities - norseboar
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/uber-and-lyft-have-become-indistinguishable-commodities/?ref=technology

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MarkMc
Ride sharing will become like airline travel: a huge industry which greatly
benefits the consumer, while suppliers struggle to make a profit on very thin
margins.

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cblock811
When I worked for Lyft they did almost no brand training anyways. I'm a big
fan of brand identity, so seeing the company slack on this almost makes me
want to use Uber. Being lazy with one's brand makes it hard for people to take
any company seriously.

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toomuchtodo
Transporation is a commodity. I don't care about Uber or Lyft's brand.

Can you get me where I'm going? Are you affordable? That's all that matters.

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cylinder
Once the VC is burned through, profits will normalize close to zero as they
compete on price. Uber is hoping to avoid this by getting access to Google's
self driving car tech.

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toasted
this applies to many of the "sharing economy" businesses.

airbnb seems to have a monopoly at present but as their listings become shown
on competitor booking sites with lower fees customers will soon follow and the
whole thing becomes commodified, and eventually peer2peer or non-profit/non-
fee networks will win out.

the supreme type of monopolies enjoyed by facebook/ebay/amazon will not occur
in these style businesses unless they can enforce exclusivity, and most (non-
US) states won't allow this.

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recalibrator
Uber will buy Lyft. Not that I want that to happen, but it seems likely.

