I was actually just thinking about this the other day- why doesn't a large tech company with lots of cash create a ride service which basically lets the driver keep everything? Uber can't possibly compete. Google can destroy them before they can become a threat in other tech spaces.
So its just a quality of service type thing. However if there were far more incentives for the drivers themselves and you built it in such a way that they could be actively doing service for a competitor while monitoring/taking rides from another.. why not? Many drivers work for both uber and lyft. With the right technical structure you can use Uber's army against them, made easier by the fact that Uber isn't known for really wanting to take care of drivers.
Good thing Uber has already done the hard work for them :) Speaking as someone who uses Uber a lot, if another service offered it cheaper I'd jump ship in a heartbeat. I think the same goes for the drivers, who are in many cases already driving for multiple services at the same time.
>Google would have so spend a shit ton of money on advertising
How so? if it's 20% cheaper I doubt it will need much advertising at all.
I feel like Google failed with Google+ not simply due to being late to the market, but because Google+ was a big paradigm shift from Facebook style social media and it didn't catch on with users. If they had gone with a more conventional solution I think they could have taken a rather large chunk out of Facebook's user base.
Customers use Uber because there are enough drivers that service tends to be reliable; Drivers use Uber because there are enough customers to sustain a living.
