Yeah, it's a new and interesting situation. And I'm sure Uber will appeal. But assuming this turns out to be final...
As an employer Uber can set shifts for its employees and ban them from taking jobs from anywhere else while on shift.
I wonder what Uber's new privileges with respect to its workers will cost. What benefits are California employers required to pay? Paid vacation? Pay in lieu of notice for termination without cause? Employment insurance contributions? Social security contributions?
It's all going to be a moot point in the end. Transport automation is coming.
Transport automation is indeed coming. This is even worse for Uber as their main asset right now is their network of drivers. When transport automation is mainstream (still pretty far away) these services will create a race to the bottom as the barrier to entry is very low. Bigger wallets than Uber can price them out.
Barrier to entry absolutely is not low with transport automation, and network effect will prevail. Rest assured Uber will happily ditch their drivers for computers at the first possible opportunity. They are investing heavily in this in fact.
Uber's biggest asset is the installed customer base. Uber's drivers are technically their biggest liability... as this ruling well demonstrates!
Uber has another big asset that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned. Their ride data will probably be hugely valuable for routing automated vehicles. I'd wager they have people working right now to find the optimal distribution of self-driving cars over a given metro area/time of day.
I'll also speculate this this is a pretty big competitive advantage. Collecting that much ride data is not trivial.
That won't be static in the age automated vehicles. Vehicles will be networked and this dynamic will change constantly. Uber's ride data is useless at that point.
Why do you believe the network effect would prevail when self-driving transport is available?
When I want to get from point A to point B, it doesn't really matter what my friends or other people are using, I just personally want good service at a good price - and I don't think I'd be particularly loyal to any one provider.
I expect that smaller regional providers of self-driving taxis would be able to compete on even footing with larger companies, once self-driving vehicles are purchasable commodities without heavy R&D costs.
What most people want is a car to arrive very quickly (perhaps in seconds) of predictable quality for the best fee. The largest operators with the best software and economy of scale will win this game. You won't be able to automate a single car and compete, not the least of the reason being users aren't going to jump through 15 apps to request a car, and big players will not hand you their customers.
If Uber can operate 100,000 robo-cars in San Fran you can walk up to the sidewalk and press Hail and presto you have your ride. They can dynamically balance load between nearby cities on a day-by-day even hourly basis dispatching streams of robo-cars from their garages when the surges hit. Large events which drive demand are pre-scheduled and automatically reflected in both car distribution and the number of gasoline futures they trade on the options board for the upcoming week, etc. etc.
You can bet these robo-cars will be getting robo-tire-rotations and any other effeciencies they can squeeze out. (Imagine a line of them going through Uber's robo-washers)
5? 10? 15 years out? Doesn't really matter but I'm convinced it will eventually happen. It will be awesome and terrible all at once.
Laws aren't perfect. We would never have progress if we never challenged them (in reasonable contexts, not committing outright crimes). This is clearly a case where millions of people are benefiting from a modern approach and it makes sense to review the laws to see if they still work in the current era/culture/society.
Hardly. The only way you can possibly launch something like Uber is to adopt the "Act first, apologize later" model.
Companies like Uber face problems most of us can't even imagine, such as regulatory capture by the incumbent taxi industry. Yes, Uber plays dirty, but to some extent I think they have to, because it's a dirty game.
Disagree. Uber is investing heavily in self-driving cars. When they arrive in a practical way, Uber will have a brand name, an app already installed on millions of phones, and an infrastructure at scale to handle routing and billing. Not to mention excellent free cash flow and a valuation in the multi-billions that they can borrow against. Not sure who the bigger fish in this space is who would come along and eat their lunch?
No, it really isn't. There isn't anything special about them, unless you're one of those people that believes a patent should be granted for an existing process simply because now it says, "on a computer".
I have some experience in this area of law and in my view it's how the "on a computer" aspect of the situation affects the power dynamic between Uber and the driver that makes it new and interesting.
In the model where contractors are dispatched to handle some task by phone the contractor is able to make counter offers to the company. Eliminating that through automation affects the legal test. The point I was replying to about the ability to choose jobs from different clients (Uber vs Lyft vs all the other edelivery services) also makes this different.
This is a complex area of law, which I'm guessing you haven't personally litigated, so you incorrectly compare it to the software patent issue.
As an employer Uber can set shifts for its employees and ban them from taking jobs from anywhere else while on shift.
I wonder what Uber's new privileges with respect to its workers will cost. What benefits are California employers required to pay? Paid vacation? Pay in lieu of notice for termination without cause? Employment insurance contributions? Social security contributions?
It's all going to be a moot point in the end. Transport automation is coming.