Uber vs Lyft: a 15-year war

Transcript

Uber vs. Lyft explained, this is one of the dirtiest rivalries in tech, fake rides, stolen drivers, billions burned, and now a new enemy that could beat them both. Let's go back to the start. 2010, San Francisco, Uber launches as a fancy black car service. Tap a button, a driver in a suit shows up. Two years later, Lyft arrives with a crazy idea, what if regular people drove their own cars? Lyft drivers even put giant pink mustaches on their cars. Riders sat in the front, fist bumps included, it was cheap, it was friendly and it worked. So what did Uber do? It copied it. Uber launched Uber X, regular drivers, regular cars, lower prices, and the war began. Both companies slashed prices, paying riders to choose them and paying drivers to stay. Investors poured in billions just to keep the fight going. Then it got dirty. In 2014, Lyft accused Uber employees of booking and cancelling thousands of Lyft rides, putting drivers time and trying to poach them. Uber kept winning until 2017. During a protest at New York's airport, Uber looked like it was caching in. The hashtag DeleteUber exploded. Hundreds of thousands of people deleted the app. Lyft jumped in and donated $1 million to a civil rights group. Downloads soared. That same year, scandal after scandal hit Uber. And its founder, Travis Kalanick, was pushed out. Then came the race to Wall Street. In 2019, Lyft went public first, beating Uber by a few weeks. But both stocks dropped soon after. Investors asked one simple question. Can either of these companies ever make money? So who won? Today, Uber takes about three out of every four rides in the US. Lyft holds roughly a quarter. Uber also does food delivery. Freight and is now very profitable. Lyft bet on staying focused and is now expanding into Europe. But here's the plot twist. The biggest threat isn't each other anymore. It's cars with no driver at all. In San Francisco, Waymo's robot taxes grabbed over a fifth of the market and both Uber and Lyft lost ground. So now they're racing to partner with the robots. Uber teamed up with Waymo. Lyft is working with others because whoever controls the app might still control the ride. The war isn't over. It just changed opponents.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.