I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. At that level, corruption, either because of sympathies or financial interests, actually become less common: there is so much outside scrutiny of your work, and any failure will forever be tied to you, that it's in Holder's long-term interest to do a good job. He must be operating under the assumption that the author of that blog post will sue if his investigation appears tainted, and it's unlikely shoddy work by him could survive "the harassment trial of the century" (with dozens of lawyers and investigators using their power of discovery).
But yeah, the optics aren't great. They could've chosen someone like Michael Garcia who has proven his independence. I'm almost inclined to suspect incompetence by now.
Anyway, does it matter? Uber is subsidising each ride at a rate of about 50%, operates in a market with literally no barriers to entry and is saddled with the burden of having investors and lenders expecting some return on the dozens of billions they burned through.
People have finally realised it's a frat house run by red-faced chauvinists and it's only a matter of time until the financial music stops and investors realise this Ford Ponzi only has two seats.
Prediction: Uber will go under within the next 12 months, it will be revealed that they've been most creative in their bookkeeping and there'll be a sudden need of a few extra beds in some federal sweaty-white-collar prison.
> Prediction: Uber will go under within the next 12 months, it will be revealed that they've been most creative in their bookkeeping and there'll be a sudden need of a few extra beds in some federal sweaty-white-collar prison.
I suspect it will be more of a Groupon type deal. They'll exist as a large player in an increasingly crowded market via their brand name advantage. Then expect big lay-offs as the valuations/cash injections drop and later some consolidation within the industry etc will shift everything to a significantly more realistic position.
IMO they left their IPO a little past the excitement point.
I'll take the other side of that bet any day of the week.
I'm not disputing your assessment of the company culture or the VC fueled pricing. They're spot on. I just think there's no viable competitor (at the moment) to truly challenge them.
Here's a man who just spent six years handing out soft-touch settlements to practically every Too Big to Fail bank in the world. Now he returns to a firm that represents many of those same companies: Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup, to name a few.
They don't need one viable competitor. Many smaller/regional ones will do the trick just fine. I travel all over the world without using Uber. This year I used them in Lisbon and now Taipei. Since Taiwan shut them down I just using a taxi booking app. Deleted Uber account yesterday. Never coming back. There is always a convenient alternative.
As you noted, Taiwan banned it. HK has a similar policy too. In the U.S. I am not aware of any bans on Uber driving program yet. That's a huge difference.
That's not banning Uber from operating. Uber and Lfyt pulled out because they didn't agree with fingerprint check, so they decided to pressure the Austin government by halting the operation there. But I say yes this does give other local/native taxi apps a chance since they can now compete without Uber and Lyft, to be fair in this debate.
Holder may do a great job but even the appearance of impropriety must be avoided in these cases. Holder should have declined; Uber should have found someone else.
You should check out what Microsoft and Intel were upto in the 90s before coming to conclusions.
What has changed though, in a month were we have seen Zuckerberg apologize, an Infosys leaker and now Uber, is employees don't really put up as much as they used to with org culture.
But yeah, the optics aren't great. They could've chosen someone like Michael Garcia who has proven his independence. I'm almost inclined to suspect incompetence by now.
Anyway, does it matter? Uber is subsidising each ride at a rate of about 50%, operates in a market with literally no barriers to entry and is saddled with the burden of having investors and lenders expecting some return on the dozens of billions they burned through.
People have finally realised it's a frat house run by red-faced chauvinists and it's only a matter of time until the financial music stops and investors realise this Ford Ponzi only has two seats.
Prediction: Uber will go under within the next 12 months, it will be revealed that they've been most creative in their bookkeeping and there'll be a sudden need of a few extra beds in some federal sweaty-white-collar prison.