What Uber Really Fears

Isabel Roughol posted a very interesting piece on LinkedIn today about how Uber’s Privacy scandal is a symptom of Uber’s culture. She paints a cautionary portrait of a company that is endangering its future with its wanton disregard towards privacy and threatening its enemies, even if these “enemies” are journalists doing what real journalists are supposed to do.

Uber will probably survive this “scandal” because it doesn’t fear the media nor does it worry about a large-scale customer abandonment because of its corporate behavior. Nor does it fear its old school competitors because they lack the organization and political juice to pressure government leaders.

Simply put, the service is far superior to anything out there and most people put a value-added service like this ahead of their ethics (ever try to get a cab in New York when it rains?). Call it situational ethics, but when a service like Uber is so seductively easy and efficient, and you’re talking about a low out-of-pocket expense like a cab fare, a blind eye will be turned.

The only thing Uber fears is regulation and taxation on a local, state and/or Federal level, which frankly is inevitable. When these government agencies figure out how they can get a slice of the Uber revenue pie, the situation will change.

And this is the real cautionary tale: The parallels to Zynga are eerie. Zynga thrived by exploiting a loophole in Facebook’s ad policy and declined – okay, crashed – when that loophole was closed.

Your move, Uber.