Uber's Dark Descent: How Abandoning Innovation Hurt Drivers and Gouges Riders

I don&#x27;t see the long term vision for Uber rides. Waymo and their ilk are already here, with three primary friction points<p>1) building trust &amp; abundance of caution - this will continue to compound and at some point it will reach a tipping point 2) scale - Waymo doesn&#x27;t have enough cars on the road yet. pickup times are long. 3) high price - Waymo in my area is slightly more expensive (and takes longer) than Uber&#x2F;Lyft.<p>They could easily halve the price tomorrow and blow Uber&#x2F;Lyft out of the water. There&#x27;s no way to compete because Waymo variable costs are so much lower. Waymo is growing smart - they&#x27;re building the trust, scaling slowly, and when it&#x27;s time, they&#x27;ll cut prices &amp; go for the jugular and it won&#x27;t be pretty for Uber&#x2F;Lyft.

My son has an Uber Teen account, but has always been hesitant to use it. A couple weeks ago, my car was in the shop, my wife had the other car, but my son was supposed to be dropped off at a birthday party. I fired up Uber and put in the address - $35 for me to take Uber (round trip it would have been $70 to drop him off). I scheduled the ride, and then remembered he had an Uber Teen account. Cancelled my trip for $5 and had him open his Uber Teen app. The same trip for him was $12! 1&#x2F;3rd the price. Different vehicle, but going to the same destination. I was happy to save almost $60, but pissed me off on how much Uber thought it could gouge me… and amused at how their algorithm does dynamic pricing between users on the same account. Now, I should have fired up the Lyft app to see how much it would charge me, but I suspect the two companies spend the majority of their time trying to deduce the other’s pricing algorithm to just slightly undercut the other a fraction of the time. It feels like pricing collusion via algorithm.

This doesn&#x27;t mention the key issue, which is that they expected to have self driving cars working already. The drivers were going to be a problem that went away, and presumably, it would let them offer a better price.

Drivers will always want better pay &amp; conditions. They lack the power to make demands, and bleeding out all over the media won&#x27;t change a damn thing. They need to unionize.

Khosrowshahi&#x27;s incompetent. Uber had the opportunity to be Amazon in retail transport. It&#x27;s more akin to Walmart

Uber has become too greedy these days. Lyft came and it was good, then it turned same like Uber.<p>I don&#x27;t understand why every app become Enshittification once they become popular.