I guess you better hope so. In the meantime, you’re stuck with 500 cabs for your whole city.
No need to hope, there already is a third car share start up in Austin that is sticking around. Capitalism for the win.
What company is that?
Yeah, I looked into it… it seems kind of weird, if some of the stuff on the web is accurate. I guess it’s a startup from Dallas, but no one knows who the CEO is? Apparently their onboarding process for drivers in Austin was to meet some dude behind a gas station by the airport, and these instructions were sent out to all the prospective drivers but they forgot to BCC, so everyone had everyone else’s email address.
But hey, I guess we’ll see how it works out for Austin folks.
Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, hears there is money in them thar’ hills.
“The issue’s not over,” Abbott said in an interview on CNBC. “Republicans in the Texas Legislature have already raised proposals coming up in the next session to override the Austin vote.”
Pressed on whether ride-hailing companies Lyft or Uber would return to Austin, Abbott said: “I’d just say the game is not over. It’s halftime, and we’ll see what happens in the second half.”
In another media appearance Monday, Abbott spoke highly of Uber, agreeing with a host’s suggestion that the service is “good for America.”
“It provides options for Americans, and I think that’s a good thing,” Abbott told Bloomberg Politics’ Mark Halperin.
Government regulations have unintended consequences.
Heh, they essentially made an Uber black market.
A UK employment tribunal has ruled that Uber drivers are its “workers” under contract, which means they get some, though not all, employment law protections.
Welp.
The BBC is also reporting (though buried at the bottom of the story, so take it with a big pinch of salt) that Kalanick may resign once the COO is appointed.
You almost have to admire the inventiveness.
tl;dr - Uber had a program called Hell that generated fake Lyft cars and accounts so Lyft would think a driver was one the way to answer a call, but in reality an Uber driver would get sent. The program also tracked drivers that worked for both companies and would adjust bonuses for them to lure them away from Lyft.
Looks like the article is behind a paywall, but this part seems really hard to believe. My understanding is that a Lyft (or Uber) driver account isn’t like getting a QT3 sock puppet or even a Lyft rider account. There are ID and background checks. There are methods of payment and payment accounts. How could external software spoof all that? You’d have to have access to Lyft’s internal network to do all that. Admittedly, if they were somehow doing this, I highly suspect that’s all kinds of illegal, even if it didn’t involve hacking of some sort.
The second part on luring, I’d buy. I also don’t think there’s anything fishy about that.
Try this one that’s not behind a paywall.
[quote]
The program apparently started when Uber decided to create fake Lyft rider accounts and fooled its rival’s system into thinking they were in various locations around the city. Those fake riders were positioned in a grid to give Uber the entire view of a city and all of Lyft’s drivers within it. As a result, the company can see info on up to eight of its competitor’s nearest drivers per fake rider.
While keeping an eye on its rivals’ cars, though, Uber noticed that Lyft’s drivers are identified by special numbered IDs that never change like its own tokens do.[/quote]
That article gives details on the second allegation (luring drivers who work for both) but gives no details on the former (generating fake Lyft cars) allegation from the other paywall restricted article.
Wow, it’s something even shadier than Uber (scroll down to “An IPO”). An IPO of a company with no developers whose only product is an app that doesn’t exist reliant on APIs that don’t exist, run by someone who was until recently barred from being a director. And it’s all being advertised to the public on TV. Christ, the JOBS Act was a terrible idea.
An article about Uber being terrible in general
and a specifically it had a feature that they basically used shady backdoors to track users even after they had deleted the app. That kinda blew up over the weekend.
Breaking News: Travis Kalanick engages in corporate espionage using wrench wielding lackeys!
I’m glad the ‘Take on Me’ rotoscoper has found some new work.