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The Fiercest Rivalry In Tech: Uber vs. Lyft
onehitwonder (1118559) writes WSJ looks at the cantankerous rivalry between two popular ride-sharing companies, Uber and Lyft, and the dirty tactics each employs to weaken its opponent. Lyft, for example, alleges that representatives from Uber frequently order short rides from Lyft just to slow down Lyft's service and to try to poach its drivers. WSJ points out that the rivalry is more than just a made-for-TV competition: "It's a battle for a key role in the future of urban transportation." Lyft certainly isn't Uber's only rival, though, even setting aside conventional taxis and car services, even those two names are big in U.S. cities: its clash with Gett has reportedly involved tricks at least as dirty. Another way to look at the rivalry, too, is that the biggest clash is not between Uber and any other particular company, but rather between the various ride-calling / ride-sharing services taken together against the existing, regulated taxi and car-service companies they threaten.
Well he started PayPal. Arguably won of the sleaziest web companies on earth.
In a normal free market environment I would simply say let the market sort them out, this is war, there can be no rules as long as the government does not participate in any of it. The ones with the deepest pockets will win, which is correct from the perspective of the market rewarding some of them more than others.
Of-course the participation of government completely skews the picture, the Federal reserve is creating so much inflation that all this newly created cash has to go somewhere, so it goes into the stock market and the financing and IPOs for companies that would not get financing in a normal market environment but they are getting it now, because there is no yield anywhere due to government depressed interest rates. My point is that there are all these asset, bond, dollar bubbles that are going to implode in a terrible way, you don't know what will happen to any of these companies at that time except that it won't be pretty for the entire economy.
--- /. bug, where it reported 12 comments on this story and then in half a minute 11 comments, hmm).
(as a side note, just observed some
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