https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-ftc/uber-to-pay-20-m...
The reason those bears were wrong was because fb, snap, and airbnb are network-effects businesses. If ride-sharing had turned out to be a network-effect service as well, the bears would have lost.
I don't remember any arguments back then talking about why Uber was not a network effects business. And it's actually quite subtle!
For example, why did AirBnB win? On the surface homesharing seems VERY similar to ridesharing and yet it's behaved very differently as a bushiness and has not been a race to the bottom.
Those are entirely different arguments about unrelated companies. You seem to be saying that people have said negative things about things, therefore nothing important was being said about Uber.
Virtually every critic I've ever heard commenting about Uber as a business is exactly the one you have painted as having been unthinkable.
Because they were and continue to be completely willing to ignore any and all local laws until someone actually shows up and bashes them for it.
If it weren't for Covid shutting everything down and putting housing back into the local rental market, I suspect AirBnB was headed for some very large lawsuits. We'll see if that continues once things pick up again.
Wasn't Uber doing the same?
Ten years later they are a $73 billion market cap publicly traded company.
I would call that the opposite of a "fail"