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And when Facebook came out with Google Plus, we all switched away from Facebook, right? All the engineering genius in the world couldn't do enough for Google Plus (hint: it's not the engineering), why would they do any better with supplanting Lyft unless they copied Uber and lit money on fire by offering free rides for a year like they did with (domestic US) phone calls.

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Google Voice still does offer free domestic US calls. They kept renewing the one year free offer until they just declared it free indefinitely.

To extend your comparison, look at how much better buying YouTube was for Google than starting Google Video was.

Both Facebook and YouTube have very strong network effects protecting them from competition. A self-driving taxi service would have no network effect - a better analogy is to the airline industry.

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