Misplaced Pages

Uber: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →Content deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 18:21, 17 June 2023 editSeñor Jakob (talk | contribs)194 edits Added spacing at the bottomTag: Visual edit← Previous edit Revision as of 17:46, 20 June 2023 edit undo98.201.124.46 (talk) Fixed location of Uber HQ.Tags: Mobile edit Mobile web editNext edit →
Line 29: Line 29:


'''Uber Technologies, Inc,''' commonly referred to as '''Uber,''' is a transportation ] that mainly provides ] where individuals can hail a taxi (Uber) in an app on their phone. The company, based in ], provides additional services of ], ], ] and ] in the United States and around the world.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Use Uber in cities around the world |url=https://www.uber.com/global/en/cities/ |website=Uber.com}}</ref> '''Uber Technologies, Inc,''' commonly referred to as '''Uber,''' is a transportation ] that mainly provides ] where individuals can hail a taxi (Uber) in an app on their phone. The company, based in ], provides additional services of ], ], ] and ] in the United States and around the world.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Use Uber in cities around the world |url=https://www.uber.com/global/en/cities/ |website=Uber.com}}</ref>
] ]
] ]


Revision as of 17:46, 20 June 2023

American vehicle for hire, freight, food delivery, courier, and parcel delivery company For other uses, see Über and Uber (disambiguation).

Uber Technologies, Inc.
FormerlyUbercab (2009–2011)
Company typePublic
Traded as
Industry
FoundedMarch 2009; 15 years ago (2009-03)
Founders
HeadquartersSan Francisco, California, United States
Area served70 countries and 10,500 cities
Key people
Services
RevenueIncrease US$31.88 billion (2022)
Operating incomeIncrease US$-1.83 billion (2022)
Net incomeDecrease US$-9.14 billion (2022)
Total assetsDecrease US$32.11 billion (2022)
Total equityDecrease US$7.34 billion (2022)
Number of employees32,800 (2023)
Subsidiaries

Uber Technologies, Inc, commonly referred to as Uber, is a transportation conglomerate that mainly provides taxi services where individuals can hail a taxi (Uber) in an app on their phone. The company, based in San Francisco, provides additional services of ride-hailing, food delivery, package delivery and freight transport in the United States and around the world.

Uber Headquarters - San Francisco, California, United States
Uber Taxi

Uber sets fares, which use dynamic pricing, which is a model based on the local supply and demand in a specific region at the time of the booking. The company operates in approximately 70 countries and 10,500 cities. The company has over 131 million monthly active users and 5.4 million active drivers worldwide. The company has an average of 23 million trips each day through all of there services combined.

History

In December 2008 on a cold winter evening in Paris, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp was unable to catch a cab because they were in a snowstorm. This event was when Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp came up with the idea for Uber.

In 2009,Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp along with Oscar Salazar and Conrad Whelan, created the "black car" ride service model that would ultimately become UberCab. UberCab launched in 2010 in San Francisco provided ride services immediately connecting with the city's tech-heavy, car-ownership averse and urban professionals. The first Uber ride was taken on July 5th, 2010. In October of the same year, UberCab name was changed to what it is know as today, Uber. Over the next few years the company received capital funding. In May of 2011, the company rolled out in New York City, and was met with heavy resistance from the city's massive taxicab industry. Six months later, the company launched in Paris, France.

In August 2014 the company introduced Uber a car pooling service called UberPool. The model enabled riders to "pool" their rides and split the fare between multiple parties to make travel and overall fares cheaper per passengers. The following year, UberEats was launched in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. This model, following on the customer driven model the previous year, gave consumers the Uber experience with food delivery. The service immediately caught on with young millennials too busy on the job to cook dinners - giving the company additional profits.

In May of 2019, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "UBER". The New York Times reported that the company is valued at $82.4 Billion.

Self Driving Technology - San Francisco, United States


Controversies

Main article: Controversies involving Uber


Like other ridesharing companies, the company classifies its drivers as gig workers/independent contractors. This figure has become the subject of legal action in several jurisdictions. The company has disrupted taxicab businesses and allegedly caused an increase in traffic congestion. Ridesharing companies are regulated in many jurisdictions and the Uber platform is not available in several countries where the company is not able or willing to comply with local regulations. Controversies involving Uber include various unethical practices such as aggressive lobbying and ignoring and evading local regulations. Many of these were revealed by a leak of documents showing controversial activity between 2013 and 2017 under the leadership of Travis Kalanick.

Ignoring and evading local regulations

The company has been criticized for its strategy of generally commencing operations in a city without regard for local regulations. The company faces regulator opposition, The company called for public support for its service and mounted a political campaign, supported by lobbying, to change regulations. The company argued that it is "a technology company" and not a taxi company and it was not subject to the same regulations as taxi companies.

Uber's strategy was seen as too "seek forgiveness rather than permission". In 2014, with regards to airport pickups without a permit in California, drivers were told to ignore local regulations and that the company would pay for any citations. The companies response to California Assembly Bill 5 (2019), whereby it announced that it would not comply with the law, was to engage with lobbyists and mount an expensive public opinion campaign to overturn the bill on the local ballot. This was cited as an example of bad policy.

Taxi companies have also sued the company in numerous American cities for alleging that the companies policies violate taxi regulations and provides a platform for unfair competition which violates antitrust laws in the United States. Although some courts did find that Uber intentionally violated the taxi rules, the company prevailed in every case, including the only case to proceed to trial.

In March 2017, an investigation by The New York Times revealed that the company developed a software tool called "Greyball" to avoid giving rides to known law enforcement officers in areas where its service was illegal such as in Portland, Oregon, Australia, South Korea, and China. The tool identified government officials using geofencing, mining credit card databases, other identifying devices, and searches of social media. While at first, Uber stated that it only used the tool to identify riders that violated its terms of service, after investigations by Portland, Oregon, and the United States Department of Justice, the company admitted to using the tool to skirt local regulations and promised not to use the tool for that purpose. The use of "Greyball" in London was cited by the Transport for London as one of the reasons for its decision not to renew Uber's private hire operator license in September 2017. A January 2018 report by Bloomberg News stated that the company routinely used a "panic button" system, codenamed "Ripley", that locked, powered off and changed passwords on staff computers when those offices were subjected to government raids. The company allegedly used this button at least 24 times, from spring 2015 until late 2016.

Counter-intelligence research on class action plaintiffs

In 2016 Uber hired the global security consulting firm Ergo to secretly investigate plaintiffs involved in a class action lawsuit. Ergo operatives posed as acquaintances of the plaintiff's counsel and tried to contact their associates to obtain information that could be used against them. The result of which was found out causing the judge to throw out evidence obtained as obtained in a fraudulent manner.

Sexual harassment allegations and management shakeup (2017)

On February 19, 2017, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published on her website that she was propositioned for sex by a manager and subsequently threatened with termination of employment by another manager if she continued to report the incident. Travis Kalanick was allegedly made aware of the complaint. On February 27, 2017, Amit Singhal, Uber's Senior Vice President of Engineering, was forced to resign after he failed to disclose a sexual harassment claim against him that occurred while he served as Vice President of Google Search. After investigations led by former attorney general Eric Holder and Arianna Huffington, and a member of the companies board of directors, the company fired over 20 employees in June 2017.

Travis Kalanick took an indefinite leave of absence but, under pressure from investors, he resigned as CEO a week later. The company also fired Emil Michael who was a senior vice president in the company that suggested that the company should hire a team of opposition researchers and journalists, with a million-dollar budget, to "dig up dirt" on the personal lives and backgrounds of journalists who reported negatively about the company.

An example of this is when the company targeted Sarah Lacy, editor of PandoDaily, who published an article in October 2014, accusing Uber of sexism and misogyny in its advertising. In August 2018, Uber agreed to pay $7 million to settle claims of gender discrimination, harassment, and hostile work environments with 480 employees and former employees who receied $10,700 each. 56 of those employees and former employees received additional compensation of $33,900 each. In December 2019, Travis Kalanick resigned from the board of directors of the company and sold his shares.

Delayed disclosure of data breaches

On February 27, 2015, Uber admitted that it had suffered a data breach more than nine months prior. Names and license plate information from approximately 50,000 drivers were inadvertently disclosed. Uber discovered this leak in September 2014, but waited more than five months to notify the affected individuals.

An announcement in November 2017 revealed that in 2016, a separate data breach had disclosed the personal information of 600,000 drivers and 57 million customers. This data included names, email addresses, phone numbers, and drivers' license information. Hackers used employees' usernames and passwords that had been compromised in previous breaches (a "credential stuffing" method) to gain access to a private GitHub repository used by Uber's developers. The hackers located credentials for the company's Amazon Web Services datastore in the repository files, and were able to obtain access to the account records of users and drivers, as well as other data contained in over 100 Amazon S3 buckets. Uber paid a $100,000 ransom to the hackers on the promise they would delete the stolen data. Uber was subsequently criticized for concealing this data breach. Dara Khosrowshahi publicly apologized. In September 2018, in the largest multi-state settlement of a data breach, Uber paid $148 million to the Federal Trade Commission, and admitted that internal access to consumers' personal information was closely monitored on an ongoing basis was false, and stated that it had failed to live up to its promise to provide reasonable security for consumer data. In November 2018, Uber's British divisions were fined £385,000 (reduced to £308,000) by the Information Commissioner's Office.

In 2020, the US Department of Justice announced criminal charges against former Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan for obstruction of justice. The criminal complaint said Joe Sullivan arranged with Travis Kalanick's knowledge, to pay a ransom for the 2016 breach as a "bug bounty" to conceal its true nature, and for the hackers to falsify non-disclosure agreements to say they had not obtained any data.

Privacy

In July 2017, Uber received a five-star privacy rating from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but was harshly criticized by the group in September 2017 for a controversial policy of tracking customers' locations even after a ride ended, forcing the company to reverse its policy.

2022 leak documenting misdeeds

Main article: Uber Files

More than 124,000 Uber documents covering the five-year period from 2012 to 2017 when Uber was run by its co-founder Travis Kalanick were leaked by Mark MacGann, a lobbyist who "led Uber's efforts to win over governments across Europe, the Middle East and Africa", to The Guardian newspaper and first printed on 10 July 2022 by its Sunday sister The Observer. The documents revealed attempts to lobby Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and George Osborne; how Emmanuel Macron secretly aided Uber lobbying in France, and use of a kill switch during police raids to conceal data. Travis Kalanick dismissed concerns from other executives that sending Uber drivers to a protest in France put them at risk of violence from angry opponents in the taxi industry, saying "I think it's worth it, violence guarantees success".

Finances

File:Uber-Profits .webp
Uber Profits (2016-2022)

Uber has posted hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in losses each year since 2014 except for 2018, when it exited from the markets in Russia, China, and Southeast Asia in exchange for stakes in rival businesses. Uber had 32.11 billion USD worth of assets, 24.03 billion USD in liabilities.




References

  1. "Use Uber in cities around the world". Uber.com.
  2. "Use of Uber in cities around the world".
  3. "Uber Announces Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022" (Press release). Business Wire. February 8, 2023.
  4. "Uber Newsroom". www.uber.com. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  5. Feiner, Lauren (May 10, 2019). "Uber ends its first day of trading down more than 7%". CNBC. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  6. Merced, Michael J. de la; Conger, Kate (May 9, 2019). "Uber I.P.O. Values Ride-Hailing Giant at $82.4 Billion". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved June 17, 2023.
  7. ^ Ongweso, Edward Jr.; Koebler, Jason (September 11, 2019). "Uber Became Big by Ignoring Laws (and It Plans to Keep Doing That)". Vice Media.
  8. Edelman, Benjamin (June 21, 2017). "Uber Can't Be Fixed — It's Time for Regulators to Shut It Down". Harvard Business Review.
  9. Kirchner, Elyce; Paredes, David (October 6, 2014). "Uber and Lyft Drivers Told to Ignore Regulations: Companies Pay Airport Citations for Drivers". KNTV.
  10. SAMMON, ALEXANDER (September 12, 2019). "Uber Goes Back to Basics: Violating the Law". The American Prospect.
  11. Larkin, Emilee (August 6, 2021). "Boston cab drivers lose battle with Uber at First Circuit". Courthouse News Service.
  12. "John Greil, The Unfranchised Competitor Doctrine, 66 Villanova Law Review 357, 377 (2021)". digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu. Retrieved July 10, 2022.
  13. Isaac, Mike (March 3, 2017). "How Uber Deceives the Authorities Worldwide". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 5, 2017.
  14. Somerville, Heather (March 8, 2017). "Uber prohibits use of 'Greyball' technology to evade authorities". Reuters.
  15. Timberg, Craig; Fung, Brian (March 3, 2017). "Uber's secret 'Greyball' program shows just how far it will go to get its way". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on April 30, 2017.
  16. Njus, Elliot (March 6, 2017). "Portland to investigate Uber's 'Greyball' scheme to thwart regulators". The Oregonian. Archived from the original on September 10, 2018.
  17. "Transportation Network Companies: Regulation Evasion Audit". Portland Bureau of Transportation. April 28, 2017. Archived from the original on May 3, 2017.
  18. Njus, Elliot (April 27, 2017). "Portland may subpoena Uber over regulator-dodging 'Greyball' software". The Oregonian. Archived from the original on September 10, 2018.
  19. Levine, Dan; Menn, Joseph (May 5, 2017). "Exclusive: Uber faces criminal probe over software used to evade authorities". Reuters.
  20. Isaac, Mike (May 4, 2017). "Uber Faces Federal Inquiry Over Use of Greyball Tool to Evade Authorities". The New York Times.
  21. Isaac, Mike (May 5, 2017). "Justice Department Expands Its Inquiry Into Uber's Greyball Tool". The New York Times.
  22. della Cava, Marco (March 8, 2017). "Uber admits its ghost driver 'Greyball' tool was used to thwart regulators, vows to stop". USA Today. Archived from the original on April 28, 2017.
  23. Sullivan, Joe (March 8, 2017). "An update on "greyballing"". Uber. Archived from the original on March 29, 2017.
  24. "TFL decision on Uber London Limited" (Press release). Transport for London. September 22, 2017.
  25. "Uber has lost its licence to operate in London". Business Insider. September 22, 2017.
  26. "Uber to begin appeal over London licence". BBC News. June 25, 2018.
  27. Zaleski, Olivia; Newcomer, Eric (January 11, 2018). "Uber's Secret Tool for Keeping the Cops in the Dark". Bloomberg News. Archived from the original on September 21, 2018.
  28. Matousek, Mark (January 11, 2018). "Uber reportedly disrupted government investigations for almost 2 years with a 'secret' system called 'Ripley'". Business Insider. Archived from the original on September 8, 2018.
  29. Solon, Olivia (January 11, 2018). "Uber developed secret system to lock down staff computers in a police raid". The Guardian. Archived from the original on January 11, 2018.
  30. Brandom, Russel; Hawkins, Andrew (July 10, 2016). "How Uber secretly investigated its legal foes — and got caught". theverge.com. The Verge. Retrieved July 18, 2022. By the end of the week, Henley was on the phone with a corporate research firm called Ergo, also known as Global Precision Research LLC, asking for help with "a sensitive, very under-the-radar investigation." After a few emails, Henley worked out the terms of the deal with an Ergo executive named Todd Egeland. It would be a "level two" investigation, the middle of the three levels of work offered by Ergo. It would be drawn from seven source interviews conducted over the course of 10 days, for which Uber would pay $19,500. As with any Ergo investigation, the confidentiality of the client was paramount, and sources were never meant to know who was paying for the research. "We do quite a bit of this work for law firms," Egeland reassured him. (Ergo did not respond to requests for comment.)
  31. Hiltzik, Michael (June 10, 2016). "Column: How sleazy is Uber? This federal judge wants to know". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 22, 2022. As it turns out, it was them. Uber confessed in February that it had hired the security firm Ergo to investigate Mayer and his lawyers. In fact, Meyer's lawyers say Ergo's investigative report was circulating in Uber's offices and may have been in the hands of the company's general counsel, Salle Yoo, on January 20, the very day the company's lawyers were saying "it is not us."
  32. Fowler, Susan (February 19, 2017). "Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber".
  33. Kosoff, Maya (February 20, 2017). "Uber C.E.O. Orders "Urgent Investigation" into Sexual Harassment Allegations". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on July 13, 2017.
  34. Isaac, Mike (February 27, 2017). "Amit Singhal, Uber Executive Linked to Old Harassment Claim, Resigns". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 8, 2017.
  35. Overly, Steven (February 21, 2017). "Uber hires Eric Holder to investigate sexual harassment claims". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on February 21, 2017.
  36. Solon, Olivia (June 7, 2016). "Uber fires more than 20 employees after sexual harassment investigation". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on June 7, 2017.
  37. Marinova, Polina (June 6, 2017). "Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees After Harassment Investigation: Report". Fortune. Archived from the original on June 8, 2017.
  38. Isaac, Mike (June 21, 2017). "Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 21, 2017.
  39. Lacy, Sarah (October 22, 2014). "The horrific trickle down of Asshole culture: Why I've just deleted Uber from my phone". PandoDaily. Archived from the original on September 10, 2018.
  40. O'Brien, Sara Ashley (August 22, 2018). "Uber to pay 56 workers $1.9 million for harassment and discrimination claims". CNN. Archived from the original on September 9, 2018.
  41. Palmer, Annie (December 24, 2019). "Travis Kalanick severs all ties with Uber, departing board and selling all his shares". CNBC.
  42. Guess, Megan (February 28, 2015). "50,000 Uber driver names, license plate numbers exposed in a data breach". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on November 25, 2016.
  43. Taylor, Colleen (February 22, 2015). "Uber Database Breach Exposed Information Of 50,000 Drivers, Company Confirms". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on December 30, 2017.
  44. Lee, Dave (November 22, 2017). "Uber concealed huge data breach". BBC News. Archived from the original on June 25, 2018.
  45. Farivar, Cyrus (November 21, 2017). "Hackers hit Uber in 2016: data on 57 million riders, drivers stolen". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on November 22, 2017.
  46. Wong, Julia Carrie (November 22, 2017). "Uber faces slew of investigations in wake of 'outrageous' data hack cover-up". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 22, 2017.
  47. "Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57 Million People". Bloomberg News. November 21, 2017. Archived from the original on November 21, 2017.
  48. Liedtke, Michael (November 22, 2017). "Uber reveals coverup of hack affecting 57M riders, drivers". Financial Post. Associated Press. Archived from the original on September 8, 2018.
  49. Al-Muslim, Aisha (September 26, 2018). "Uber to Pay $148 Million Penalty to Settle 2016 Data Breach". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Archived from the original on September 27, 2018.
  50. "Monetary Penalty Notice (Uber)" (PDF). Information Commissioner's Office. November 27, 2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 28, 2018.
  51. BOND, SHANNON (August 20, 2020). "Former Uber Executive Charged With Paying 'Hush Money' To Conceal Massive Breach". NPR.
  52. Reitman, Rainey (July 10, 2017). "Who Has Your Back? Government Data Requests 2017". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Archived from the original on September 15, 2018.
  53. Gebhart, Kurt Opsahl and Gennie (September 18, 2017). "In A Win For Privacy, Uber Restores User Control Over Location-Sharing". Electronic Frontier Foundation.
  54. Lewis, Paul; Davies, Harry; O'Carroll, Lisa; Goodley, Simon; Lawrence, Felicity (July 11, 2022). "The Uber whistleblower: I'm exposing a system that sold people a lie". The Guardian.
  55. Davies, Harry; Goodley, Simon; Lawrence, Felicity; Lewis, Paul; O'Carroll, Lisa (July 10, 2022). "Uber broke laws, duped police and built secret lobbying operation, leak reveals". The Observer.
  56. Jon Russell (April 12, 2019), "Uber has already made billions from its exits in China, Russia and Southeast Asia", TechCrunch

Further reading

Scholarly papers

Books

Articles

Further viewing

External links

Uber
Founders
Executives
Subsidiaries
Acquisitions
Defunct/Former
History
Related
Sharing economy
Concepts
Social peer-to-peer processes
Companies
Transportation
Hospitality exchange services
Swap and renting
Major Internet companies
Companies with an annual revenue of over US$4 billion
Internet
Cloud computing
E-commerce
Media
Categories: