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Comment by lobo_tuerto | Hacker News Reader

Waiting on Lyft to go international and disrupt Uber's hegemony.

Yeah Lyft was nice in the US, but in Guatemala I can't go back to life before Uber. I hope Lyft brings in a higher class service though like Uber Black.

Oh yeah, Guate taxis are awful -- having to negotiate separately for each ride is crazy.

What makes you think Lyft is any better than Uber?

Their comment didn't imply that they think this.

Competition, generally speaking, is good.

I can't wait to have two 200mb apps on my phone fulfilling the same need instead of one!

I found out about m.lyft.com and m.uber.com the other day. Both work pretty well, and I hope they save you as much space as they saved me! (Uber's app was 451MB on my phone)

Most of my ride sharing has been booked through their integration with google maps app

also, the uber app tracks your location while you're not using the app (they say they only do so for ~5 minutes after your drop off, but you have to trust them).

whereas you can deny the m.uber.com browser tab the ability to get your location from the browser (caveat: [0]), and you can close the tab when you're in the car.

[0] companies can still get rough location information from your mobile IP address [1], because of course that's a revenue stream for all the big mobile carriers.

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/services-grab-location-info-d...

You know that isnt true anymore with the 5m location thing

On iOS this has been changed to “when the app is open” for months.

If they were to change it back, would you have to re-authorize that permission? I really don't know.

The Lyft app is 17.38 MB, and the Uber app is 35.04 MB.

On my Android phone, the system says Uber is 190MB plus 3MB of data.

Are you looking at a download size or installed size? I have Uber on my iPhone and it's 150 MB for the "App Size" and another 14 MB for "Documents and Data".

Lyft app size 43.33 MB, user data 1.09 MB. Android 8.0.0. I wonder why such a spread in size?

Probably AOT compilation and extraction of some resources from the APK. I don't have either installed, but my point was that 200 MB seems like a gross exaggeration. At worst, you could use ride.lyft.com in your web browser.

Or you can use Google Maps to do the same for both.

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