The seams are where life happens. If daily life becomes seamless, the only thing keeping us from living inside of a movie will be our bowel movements.

14 years later and we're still building systems for people to use the Internet to order and have goods delivered.

Guess that Tech Bust wasn't warranted after all.

How is this any different than Kozmo back in the last dot-com bubble? They did one hour delivery for no charge too and couldn't make it work, blew through $250M in funding in the process.

they're basically taking on Amazon and Google

except Bezos was an early investor in Uber.

To the question of the headline the answer is 'yes', (in contradiction to Betteridge's law); and they have the 'lobbying' funds to do exactly that. they are in nearly every major city's mayor's office, including Seattle's.

(step-1 on evil whiteboard of evilness: Establish a monoculture of delivery of all things, persons and objects, in every major municipality ...)

What @6 said. Uber is blowing through a round of venture capital. They don't have a sustainable business model so they need to find something which will justify another round of venture capital.

@8 - I'm curious where you found this information...not that I would be at all surprised.

Given that: I really wonder if the 'ride-share' magic really is all the cost differential between an artificially scarce market (old-school taxis) hiding behind protectionist regulation, or old school deep-pockets monopolist cost under-cutting.

In short: after Uber or Lyft establishes a monopoly in an area by "dumping", how long before the benefits to consumers and contractors (drivers) evaporate.

Depressing on so many levels.

First, big disappointment in David Plouffe. Not that I was ever so enamored with the guy to begin with, but here's yet another case of someone in politics/government cashing in on their connections by becoming a lobbyist. And you know that influencing government decisions is central to a company's business plan when the lobbyist becomes one of the top executives.

I imagine before long we'll be seeing Plouffe lobbying against public transportation investment--you know, like light rail lines to airports--because it competes with Uber. (Now I'm sure someone will say, "Oh, public transportation doesn't compete with Uber, it complements Uber." But whether Plouffe starts lobbying against transit will be based on his company's view of its self-interest, not based on any corporate obligation to the public interest. As we know, corporations are people, just people whose charter to shareholders is to not have any conscience.

And does anyone really view the likes of Uber and Lyft as being disruptive in a good way? To me this is just another example of the sharing economy that the NY Times's Tom Friedman so blithely vaunts where large numbers of Americans are scrambling to make ends meet as entrepreneurs because they can't make ends meet with regular jobs anymore. I'm reminded of Charles's fine post some months ago about the high rates of entrepreneurship in Africa.

Oh, and great lines by Anna Minard about "seamlessness." Worth saving to quote later.

Uber cut its fares by roughly 50%, taking money right out of their drivers pockets. These are full time drivers trying to make a living on starvation rates. Uber can do this because the drivers are mis-classified as independent contractors, not employees. Even though Uber can deauthorize (fire) them at will, change the conditions of their relationship with the company, cut rates as they feel like it, and at times Uber even pays them an hourly guarantee. But somehow they are not considered employees, so they have no unemployment, or other employee legally mandated benefits. Uber's model is perfect for venture capitalist investors. Uber has shifted all the risk of the business to the drivers who they have the gall to call "partners", and yet those "partners" have no voice in their own business. Exploitation in the 21st century.

A delivery service like this just won't work on a corporate level. An enterprising individual with no job prospects could maybe make this work on a small scale, but then, of course, you already have bike messengers, but same-day delivery is just too expensive. As much as Uber squeezes every last drop out of its drivers, they're not going to sufficiently reduce the cost of on-demand delivery, not unless Bezos' drone fantasy really does become reality.

@9: there really already aren't benefits for drivers.

More race to the bottom medicine masquerading under more libertarian drivel.

There's no delivery fee and customers are told they don't have to tip the driver. Since you have to order from Uber's stock, Uber presumably buys wholesale and profits from the markup, but how much do the drivers make on this? The Uber prices seem about 20-25% higher than usual, but even if all that goes to the driver, is it enough to be worth the time? Uber charges about $3 more than a drugstore for a box of tampons--one of the higher priced items. Even if all that goes to the driver, that's $3 to pick up the box and go to the customer--easily 1/2 hour. So, again, what's in it for the drivers? I can't imagine Uber gives them the full markup over wholesale--and even if they do, on most single-item orders it's still going to come out under Federal minimum wage. I suspect Uber is going to punish drivers who refuse to do deliveries, while offering no decent money for making deliveries.