caruber

The real strength of Dropbox comes from the ecosystem of apps that use dropbox to store data. It is hard for newcomers to challenge that network effect. But competitors like Tonido are doing interesting stuff by focusing on the security, privacy and the private aspects of owning your own cloud. If they are able to change the narrative from utility to trust and security then newcomers have a fighting chance.

Finally it comes to what wins the customers: Trust or Utility or the Balanced of Both.

Sorry i was not clear. 1 M price tag is for NYC medallion. This article quotes 250K Euros for taxi license in Paris: http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/08/07/anatomy-of-the-paris-...

Taxi Unions have dog in the fight. They have paid hefty licensing fees to the govt and ask for rights in return.

If uber pays 1M $ OR 500K Euros for every taxi license, uber will ask much more than what Taxi unions are asking for.

The other way to solve the issue is let govt repay the money to taxi owners and allow everybody to compete on equal footing.

While i condemn the violence, i have hard time justifying uber as a new revolution or advancement of technology.

Medallion owners pay close to 1.0 M $ to get the Taxi license from the city (NY) and they are not doing that for charity. If a new middlemen like Uber try to take the market without paying single dime it is bound to cause issues who have played by rules and invested significant money to acquire the license.

Uber simply tries to aggregate the demand side and demand concessions from the supply side to get the leads. Portraying Uber as egalitarian is wrong in so many levels.