Uber’s work model and its problems

The other day, Uber received the Crunchies award as a “startup of the year” - and at this time, San Francisco taxi drivers were protesting against the building next to the awards ceremony. The unusual business model made the company the most expensive startup in the US, but at the same time brought a lot of problems. However, many, even constantly using Uber, consider it just a "taxi call" and do not understand what the difference from applications like Yandex.Taxi is, therefore, it is worthwhile to say what causes so much indignation and why the company is so interested in unmanned vehicles.

While most people perceive Uber as a transport company, it itself claims a completely different status - software developers providing non-transport services, but only intermediary. All wishing drivers and passengers using the application simply find each other, and then the driver directly provides services to the passenger, without being an employee of Uber. While, for example, Yandex.Taxi is also an intermediary, but it provides licensed taxi companies, but not any willing driver, from the service provider.

What does it change? If Uber is not a taxi service, then it is not obliged to obey the relevant laws, pay the appropriate taxes and generally deal with a large part of their work. This allows him to provide services cheaper than traditional taxis. It is not surprising that a start-up began to grow at a tremendous rate: having started less than five years ago, it is now estimated at more than $ 40 billion (for comparison, the closest-up American startup, Palantir, costs only $ 15 billion). However, the positioning on which his entire business is built is very controversial.
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Yes, the words about mediation are partly true: after all, when on eBay sellers and buyers find each other, it does not occur to anyone to call sellers employees of the site. However, Uber tightly controls the process: eBay handles most issues on its own, and here the company itself sets tariffs, talks about which cars can participate in the system, and even prohibits drivers from taking tips. And attributing the company to the sharing economy segment, where everything is based on the mediation between users and the ability to share some kind of asset (like Couchsurfing, where you can find a little overnight), is also not quite true. In the sharing economy, this is usually not about professional earnings, and the word ridesharing correctly describes the situation “I need to go by car to another city, if I find a companion, he will pay for gasoline and will be more fun on the way” (BlaBlaCar acts as an intermediary in such a matter) . And in Uber they do not “share the trip” and do not “seek to communicate,” there we are talking only about providing professional services for money.

All this leads to the first problem: no matter what the company says about itself, the authorities have the last word, but they do not always agree with it. Uber is already active in more than 50 countries, and the situations are different. In some places, the service was simply recognized as an unlicensed taxi and demanded a stop in business. In others, protracted status debates are taking place, and it is completely unclear how they will end. The company does not want to make concessions to local legislation in specific regions (probably fearing that any concession will immediately become a precedent for the rest). As a result, the giant, represented in a variety of markets, may suddenly find itself without key ones.

The second problem: traditional taxis are unhappy that their competitor can deliberately lower prices, and are looking for ways to prevent this. For example, London taxi drivers said that in the case of Uber, the driver’s smartphone is de facto a taximeter, which cannot be used without permission. Mayor Boris Johnson acknowledged that the case is complex and a decision must be made with the help of experts.

Third: since drivers are no longer employees and the company is not responsible for their actions, it means that it also cannot fully control them, even when these actions harm it. Of course, quality control exists, and when complaining to drivers, they are denied access (positioning this not as “dismissal”, but as a “ban of the violator”). But this does not eliminate stories like the recent “Indian user Uber stated that the driver had raped her”, which is hard to imagine in a traditional taxi (the charge has not yet been confirmed, but the service has already responded by adding an alarm button to the application in the Indian market). Such scandals remain single, but they are beaten by the project’s reputation.

Fourth: the drivers themselves, not being employees, can easily show discontent. For example, in 2013, the company received several claims from drivers claiming that the phrase “tips are already included” is misleading users.

And at the same time, all the company has competitors with a similar business model like Lyft, who want to entice drivers to themselves.

Subjected to pressure from five sides at once, Uber then resorted to dubious tactics (Lyft complained that he was ordered and canceled trips with his packs, loading drivers with meaningless unpaid work), then reportedly works at a loss: he wants to grow so that It became difficult to ban, and for rapid growth, you can throw money in drivers. But investment money can not be allocated indefinitely - so the company, being successful in many metrics, can be completely unsure of its future.

And in this situation, the recent news that Uber took up unmanned vehicles looks very logical. The robot will not rape the passenger, will not arrange a strike, will not go to a competitor and will not be indignant at the lack of tips. And large-scale investments allow you to throw resources at this that are smaller than competitors and break away from them.

It just turns out that a company that declares “we are only intermediaries” wants to completely remove one of the two parties, between which it is an intermediary.