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> They've also used "‘kill switch’ during raids to stop police seeing data

If Uber wasn't a VC backed company, they would have been charged with destruction of evidence or similar.

Having used it in Mexico, they usually have a suggested price that you can just pitch with, and usually people would accept that or add a tiny amount on it.

Its not that much. And you can just bypass it by accepting the first offer you get

haggling when drunk is super fun

I have a controversial take: outside the US/Europe, Uber is mostly a tourist app.

If you actually live in developing regions:

1) your income is much lower, and you are quite price sensitive. The Uber price premium (20-40%) hits much harder.

2) the Uber alternatives are noticeably cheaper for the exact same trip.

Regarding your experience, if you were local, that inDrive driver likely would not have tried to extort $1000 MXN out of you. They saw you were a visitor and took advantage of you.

In Nigeria or Uganda there are few tourists, so Uber cannot rely on a stream of price-insensitive travelers to fill their cars. It makes total sense why they struggled in (and gave up on) the local market there.

Could simply be because it’s a phone which nowadays is a considered bigger loss than a bag means bigger chance of extorting money to give it back.

That means Uber is screwing the driver and customer the algorithmically maximum amount. It should be less, and it should be in the driver's favor. They should be able to afford a decent living.

Bolt lost their license in Thailand due to poor safety tech after a Bolt driver (that borrowed another account, didn't have a license) attempted to kidnap a school girl [0].

Bolt creates 'good' jobs for criminals, but I don't think that is what we want.

[0] - https://www.khaosodenglish.com/tech/2026/05/12/bolt-tightens...

> at $156B market cap someone sure is making money.

So 50x Pets.com or 2x Enron.

> judging a mega-corporation on lemonade-stand level accounting is a fool's errand.

Disagree. Unit economics matter and can help you cut through a lot of hype and nonsense. "Where's the money coming from?" is always a good question to ask. Sure, sometimes a megacorp loses money on each transaction and makes it up on float or whatever, but that's at least worth knowing if that's what's going on.

thank for your lovely ad-homenim and downvote. truely a thoughtful intellectual debate on the merits of the premise.

Even in countries where taxis are regulated, sometimes Uber is more expensive but safer. Like in Romania. When I used to go there a lot the official taxis were mandated to offer such low standardized rates that there was a lot of scamming going on. One of my colleagues was basically abducted by a taxi driver (taken to a dangerous gypsy area and told they would kick him out of the car unless he paid them hundreds of euro). Uber was a lot safer because you have tracability on the driver, but more expensive too. And there weren't a lot of them.

There were ways to get safe drivers in some cases by booking them through the yellow machines. But in the end the company hired private drivers for us. Though personally I would just use the metro and tram a lot too :P If you know where you're going it's not a dangerous place.

Not sure if the taxi situation is still as bad there by the way. I would hope not.

Does no one have any memory of what taxis were like and how much they cost? The taxis are gone because they weren't competitive.

It is precisely in unregulated markets I would want to use a ride shape app else they'd try to scam you on the price. Multiple times I've had drivers attempt to triple the agreed to price, or I'd have to haggle them down before the ride etc. This was over 20 years ago and Uber and the like did away with all that.

Even in Ukraine, it's far more expensive than the local equivalent which works flawlessly.

Counterpoint : in Portugal they are regulated under TVDE, and Uber is competitive with Bolt

In other words Uber did not bribe the politicians enough in their favor, market was not favorable for them, so they exited.

their only leg up in 1st world countries was largely going around any laws governing taxis