Congratulations, Uber: You’re Finally Worse Than the Cab Companies You Want to Destroy

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Hat tip, DCist: Go Home Already: Duly Noted

Congratulations, Uber: You’re Finally Worse Than the Cab Companies You Want to Destroy

People in Washington love Uber. We’ve been using it at our own peril.
By Benjamin Freed

Published November 18, 2014

A smoking-hot story Monday night by BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith confirmed out loud what many of Uber’s customers, affiliated drivers, and the journalists who cover it have been thinking for a while: this company is run by a gang of jerks. Smith writes that he recently attended a dinner in New York with Uber executives, one of whom, Emil Michael, suggested that the company conduct opposition research on journalists who dare to take a skeptical or critical approach to its ride-sharing and other urban logistic ventures. Of Michael’s plotting, Smith writes:

Over dinner, he outlined the notion of spending “a million dollars” to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists. That team could, he said, help Uber fight back against the press — they’d look into “your personal lives, your families,” and give the media a taste of its own medicine.

Since former Silicon Valley knockaround Travis Kalanick launched Uber, the company has branded itself as the small-time sufferer of taxicab cartels and excessive regulation. While it still fights city governments when it introduces ride-sharing services in new burgs, it’s time for Uber to drop the victimhood act. The company, which keeps getting venture-capital infusions, is worth at least $18 billion, employs 1,700 people around the world directly (including nearly 100 in Washington), and dispatches an undisclosed number of private drivers. Its valuation is more than 20 times the size of its closest competitor, Lyft. And it’s exhibiting the worst kind of corporate-behemoth behavior.
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Behind the scenes, as we now know, Uber has been playing a much seedier game. Its employees spent months trying to run competitors, especially Lyft, out of the game by jamming their networks with thousands of phony ride requests. It cut its fares—good for customers—while also increasing the cut it takes from drivers after completed rides. It ran a promotion in France using a local escort service. And, yes, it started stalking its critics, especially female ones like Pando Daily’s Sarah Lacy, who writes today that she no longer feels safe using Uber.
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Find Benjamin Freed on Twitter at @brfreed.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. Didn't this beast start out as a simple smartphone app for hailing a ride?