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Comment by bluetidepro | Hacker News Reader

This reads like an Onion article. How is this a billion dollar company? This just absolutely blows my mind that any of this was actually said.

It's also interesting to think that if this sort of stuff had came out when it actually happened, I guarantee that Lyft would have a lot more of an upper hand in that race. Sadly, since it's about 4 years late, I wonder sometimes if they just have too much of a market share to really get a hit from even terrible press like this. Does anyone have any numbers on how this bad press this year has been hitting them?

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How is this a billion dollar company?

One could argue that this is one of the reasons they become a billion dollar company: They disregarded laws and norms and just did whatever, getting away with it because of a tech halo.

If the company had started with a conservative legal foundation, it would have been one of dozens of small taxi hailing apps. They said to hell with it and a lot of people got rich.

Hard to prove a counterfactual, so it could also very well be the case that they are successful in spite of these failings, not because of these failings.

The very foundation of the company that we are discussing is something that was illegal in virtually every jurisdiction that they entered. There is a very legitimate argument to be made that it was a very large scale criminal enterprise. We know that this reality impacted much of their operations, including high level active evasion of authorities.

It isn't terribly surprising that traditional corporate norms weren't strictly followed in their operations or behaviors. This is true whether we believe their actions were ultimately for the public good or to bring regulations forward.

The very foundation of the company that we are discussing is something that was illegal in virtually every jurisdiction that they entered.

I think this is rewriting history just a bit.

My recollection is that, when Uber first entered the marketplace in various locations, it was largely a gray area as to whether their business was legal.

Since then regulations have changed, been clarified, or been litigated in courts to clarify their legal meaning... and Uber then proceeded to ignore those laws and do whatever the hell they wanted to.

But my view is that that culture, of simply ignoring laws it saw as inconvenient, came a bit later, after they started to become successful and viewed themselves as essentially above the law.

>I think this is rewriting history just a bit.

https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/25/uber-airbnb-jail-time/

Uber was an illegal taxi service in every jurisdiction they entered that I am aware of. This wasn't really gray. It was remarkable the restraint jurisdictions showed, I suspect because there was a sense that if they clamped down they didn't "get it".

By that point Uber had already been operating for 2 years.

I'm questioning whether they launched knowing full well they were shirking the law, or if they launched, realized they were in legal trouble, and then proceeded to not give a sh*t. :)

It should have been obvious to anyone with a modicum of sense that operating an unlicensed taxi service was illegal.

Judging by the emailed cited in the article, I no longer assume what is and isn't obvious to the founders of Uber, and I certainly don't assume they have even a modicum of sense... ;)

I don't know why you get downvoted.

I agree. Disregarding laws, norms and regulations is what gave them the advantage against competition and allowed them to become big fast.

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