>Google could bang out a ride booking app in a weekend.
Google's culture isn't really built around providing human support to users. I believe there is also lots of onboarding involved for restaurants so Google may struggle there.
With that said, I am constantly hit up by outsourced Google reps for Adwords + Firebase but I think the average customer has a much higher transaction volume with much better margins than a restaurant would.
According to Linkedin 54% of Uber employees (48,000) are in operations roles.[0]
I suppose some of these could be drivers, but I believe Uber's biggest department is operations, which is one of the reasons it's so expensive to enter new markets. Can't scale operations in the same way you can scale development.
Google would have to do something similar to launch their own ride-share app powered by Waymo, so could make sense to just keep Uber in the middle.
Maybe not, but a human at Uber responded within 15 minutes when a ride I had booked drove away from me just before pickup. They canceled the original booking with no fee, then sent another car to pick me up and gave me some Uber credits.
That's 1000% better customer service than I'd ever expect from big G. Google would probably charge me a cancellation fee for not taking the trip, shut down my account for having the temerity to complain I'd been stranded, and then followed up with automated email confirming they made the right decision after review.
Google's culture isn't really built around providing human support to users. I believe there is also lots of onboarding involved for restaurants so Google may struggle there.
With that said, I am constantly hit up by outsourced Google reps for Adwords + Firebase but I think the average customer has a much higher transaction volume with much better margins than a restaurant would.