Uber doesn't really have any way to grow. They can't exactly start charging more. They can't pay their drivers less, who already are paid poorly. The market for expensive taxi rides isn't going to expand, either.
So now they have to be in a cost-cutting mode. The app already exists, so they don't need a large staff of highly-paid technologists.
Reading about the different RTO rebellions is interesting. I know multiple people who have ended up in a half day schedule that they really like. All meetings scheduled before noon-ish, then head home to focus on work. These are all kind of against company policy but there’s a shield of willingly ignorant managers between the executives and workers. As long as the managers can say “as far as any metrics I have access to tell me my people are in the office the required days per week” they’re ok with it.
[0] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/waymo-and-uber-expand-partner...
They will be happy to lease a vehicle to you as the driver (with a predatory, abusive contract), but even this is almost entirely operated by third parties.
Also because people hate using multiple apps, you need an “aggregator” (see Stratechery). If I go to a city and I need a ride from the airport, my default is going to be to open Uber - not to say “oh yeah, Waymo is available when I fly into ATL but not when I fly into JFK”. Uber was even available when I flew into QXP from San Jose Costa Rica (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quepos_La_Managua_Airport).
Also many businesses have “Uber for Business” where business travelers can automatically get their Uber rides charged to the company instead of having to do reimbursements. How many companies are going to establish relations with Waymo to and tell their sales people/consultants - “use the Waymo app in cities where it is available otherwise use Uber”?
Just like I’m not going to open some taxi app when I fly into DCA. But I will open the Uber app and choose a taxi (with the standard taxi regulations) if it is more convenient.
Business travellers is a lot more lucrative for companies than consumers.
But getting back to Waymo and utilization, if you know you need both enough capicity to handle peak utilization and want to have capacity to handle steady state, you are going to have Waymo as a baseline and people that will come out when they think it is worth it based on current surge pricing.
Having enough Waymo cars available to handle peak capacity would be about as dumb as Intuit having enough server capacity in a Colo to handle tax season instead of using AWS and autoscaling.
Uber is also managing maintenance for Waymo in the cities it is available.
So anyone who actually knew what they were doing would just install the Gett taxi app, which was cheaper and better than Uber. If such an app existed in DCA, I would certainly install it. But I wouldn't bother with an app at all in DCA, since they already have an excellent and affordable taxi system. (Taxis in DC are cheaper than Ubers, particularly during surge pricing; if you want an app, install Curb.)
"Uber for Business" is an even more giant scam, where it costs more than Uber does personally. At the last place I worked, employees were advised to go ahead and set it up but switch to Personal and just request reimbursement because of how large the price difference was.
But you're right, Uber will always have a niche of people who are unable to install or use anything other than the Uber app and want to be blissfully unaware that better alternatives exist.
Even if I had been aware of getting a taxi directly when we went to DC last month or had been aware of the DiDi app in Costa Rica or the local app in Israel, as a tourist, I am still going to use Uber because everything is one central place, I am on vacation so I’m not that price sensitive and especially in Costa Rica, I know my Spanish is still rough and the Uber app automatically translates to English.
I would personally be very annoyed if my company asked me to reconcile Uber rides to save a few bucks when I know how much money I directly and indirectly make the company when I’m on/over a project.
When I've worked for a large company, I had to spend more time on expense reports, not less. However much I was being paid seemed to have on relevance to how much time I had to spend on keying things into Concur (and no, we didn't have admin staff who would do it for us).
If you're not "price sensitive" on vacation, good for you. If I'm on vacation in Israel (or DC), I would prefer rides that show up faster and are cheaper. If you prefer to use the Uber app for everything, that's fine, but I doubt there is much of a use case for "people who don't want to install an extra app and are OK with paying 15% more for everything".
Well funded startups haven’t been able to beat the incumbents profitably. How many people that can afford to fly from the US to Isreal or anywhere else that requires crossing an ocean are going to be price sensitive enough to research the local ride sharing spp they never heard of to save a few dollars?
Even working for a startup, once you take into account all of the other costs if business travel, is saving 15% on Uber rides really meaningful? Before working for AWS (no longer there), I worked for a 70 person startup and even there they didn’t quibble about spending money for minor quality of life improvements. This wasn’t unicorn by any means. Just a run of the mill enterprise SaaS company in the medical industry.
It would appear that competitors to Uber can indeed exist. And yes, after flying to Israel I still care about cost (or my employer does). Two weeks on the ground can cost as much for taxis as the flight would.
But that’s completely different than using Waymo in the few cities where it is available and still using Uber everywhere else in the country and constantly not having rides available during peak times.
Waymo would never have enough cars to handle peak capacity that are just sitting idle most of the time.
And why would I look to them for robotaxis? Waymo seems way ahead of them.
If you charge people $100 to deliver a loaf of bread and you have 0 customers it doesn't mean anything about your potential market size or equilibrium price to deliver a loaf of bread, because you have 0 data points.
That's demonstrably not true.
Their latest earnings (Q4 2024) showed a 20% growth in revenue, an 18% increase in trips, and a 14% increase in the number of monthly active users (all numbers YoY).