This is just a Bloomberg PR piece. China has a plan for the internet: Don't let outsiders control critical IT infrastructure / personal data.

> It was widely suggested in press accounts that the Chinese government helped Didi in its battle against Uber. Cheng rejects that, noting that as the largest ride-hailing company, Didi had to shoulder most of the regulatory burden and paid tens of millions of yuan to cover driver traffic citations and other fines.

Here in 2015 is the president of Didi talking about the strong government support they received:

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000395252

I'm not criticizing them, if I were China I wouldn't want the USA in charge of that either, but let's not pretend this was a level playing field.

The article is rather light on details on what Didi actually did better, but from using Uber as a foreigner in China, I could see significant problems in Uber's product execution:

1. The Android app continues to use Google Maps which is Great Firewall blocked, meaning I had to use a VPN to load uncached tiles.

2. Uber in turn IP blocks EC2, preventing me from using my main VPN while in app.

3. Entities on the map are shifted by the GCJ-02 offset (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...), meaning entities on the map are shifted by 0.5 miles (look at those cars driving on parkland: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hhkrjyka5uq0pfb/PeopleUber.png?dl=...)

4. User support was absolutely non-existent. After I responded to an automatic email from the local community manager inviting me to ask any questions, I only received an automated emails telling me I won't be helped.

5. Help pages in the app on Uber China tell me to see the Chinese translation, with no actual link to said translation.

While the foreigner use-case in China is niche, the sheer amount of obvious (and easily resolvable) problems I ran into suggests that Uber has organizational problems ensuring both drivers and customers have good experiences in foreign countries.

One blog from Jan 2014 highlights how bad the execution was at launch: https://www.larrysalibra.com/5-problems-with-uber-in-china-a... - the most absurd being that Uber (at that time) only accepted US-branded credit cards which few Chinese nationals hold.

Uber's problems extend far beyond China. While the app is nice, its the cheap fares that bring the vast majority of users to Uber, vs competitors or plain ol' taxis.

Those cheap fares are artificially low, funded by SV money and ignoring regulatory issues. But money does run out (or investors want a real return eventually), and regulators either change the law (nullifying their advantage) or crackdown completely.

Uber's network effects are almost non-existant. Every small geographic market has to be fought and won the hard, and expensive way. And when the money runs out and the fares go up, there is no market lock-in. Barriers to entry are low, potential competitors include anyone with a car, Uber just doesn't have a way to lock in market dominance.

Which is probably why they're rushing toward driverless vehicles as fast as they possibly can. Their own staff are an existential threat so they have to remove them as soon as possible. Except that puts them in direct competition with a whole range of extremely well funded, and well connected industry players.

So. Good luck Uber, this is just an example writ large of where Uber is heading in the not to distant future.

For those crying wolf about protectionism...

In general, I think most nations should have more closed door policies like China. My country (which won't be named) does not have a startup ecosystem anymore and we have become a consumption ground for one silicon valley startup after another. Instead of fostering local startups and paying some money (since many bootstrap and do not have big pockets), all the companies just take the freebies of silicon valley startups. We had a local chat start up but slack ate their lunch. Everyone here just uses the slack free tier. How do you compete against free?

Eventually, this has led to all the data of individuals and companies on US soil (or wherever those startups feel like stashing the data). We have no control or say over it. If we are to look for alternatives, there is none in our own country.

And for those who think the world is one giant land where everyone can roam freely, it's impossible for me to move to any of the western world because of visa restrictions. And US has the harshest work visas on the plante.

I completely understand Chinese (or any other country) entrepreneurs, why let some foreign company come in and take all the money (ultimately a lot of it outside the country) when you can do the same internally. The idea is not a rocket science, all about execution. And locals know the specifics of China more than a bunch of silicon valley grads.

Cheers to these guys for making it work in China. And Good luck to Uber fighting strengthening competition all around the world.

Giving an American company where your people are, where they are going and with whom they are likely meeting and traveling was a non-starter before we confirmed every Tom, Dick and Harry at a three-letter agency has the ability to stalk their - and anybody else's - kids and ex girlfriends.

through anti-competitive policies?

china is a difficult market. if it wasn't for the perpetual carrot of 1 billion consumers i doubt many would bother.

Wait, so we're supposed to believe this was some kind of merit or business acumen thing? Is anyone really that gullible?

For 1 & 2: when was that as for the last 1.5 years at least they use Baidu and it works fine. 3 yes indeed, very annoying. 4. In the west support is good: from China they just do not respond unless a driver screwed me on purpose (doing the ride without me in the car which happened a few time): I would receive no mail but the amount paid would be set to 0 rmb. 5. Even most car brand names are in Chinese now it seems.

What we find most annoying that I always set pick up as an intersection of two streets (fuxing/wulumuqi but in Chinese) and then stand on the corner and yet they always call to ask where we are. We are on the f*cking corner I entered and we do not speak Chinese very well so a mumbling guy does not work well. They stopped allowing you to send sms to the driver, like you can in other countries which would allow to send google offline translated details... so often they just cancel the ride because we cannot explain. Uber Black still do their best so usually that is the easiest.

Last year things were definitely easier. Drivers were doing their best more for foreigners, you could sms and they would not call before, they would just pick you up.

A big pet peeve is with Google and maybe someone here knows how to fix it; I use Google Translate with offline translations but when you are online, even though Google cannot be reached, it will try to do it online. It is beyond annoying when you quickly want to translate something, you have offline installed and yet it will just hang trying to reach the mothership...

Edit: now that I have access to Google to search for my Translate issue, I will give Netguard a go.

#1 - was this because you were still using the US store downloaded app? I highly doubt they would release Uber to Chinese people with a non-working maps.

Why does Uber block EC2?

> We had a local chat start up but slack ate their lunch. Everyone here just uses the slack free tier. How do you compete against free?

The point of division of labor (aka how civilization got built) is that it's not _necessary_ to spend time re-doing the same thing others are doing. Slack is giving you something for free that you don't _have_ to spend time or money building now.

Now you have X engineers free to work on something actually innovative, not just a clone of X, and getting a cheap/free service from slack.

The point of economic policy should not be to produce pointless jobs.

> why let some foreign company come in and take all the money (ultimately a lot of it outside the country) when you can do the same internally.

Because those engineers and entrepreneurs could have spent their time producing something globally new and innovative instead of creating an Uber clone. Then they could have sold that new thing to the world and everyone (global consumers and the aforementioned Chinese) would be better off than the status quo.

The question becomes what the consequences of that should be. Since you're arguing in favor of elaborate protectionism, that becomes a central issue.

Should Xiaomi be artificially blocked from selling smart phones in the US? Should all Huawei products be blocked? Should the policy of the US Government be to directly assist Apple versus Samsung (or any other competitor) in the US market? Should the US begin directly subsidizing immense steel production, using the US Dollar reserve currency to intentionally bankrupt China's steel producers via Fed printing to pay for it all? To what extent should the US be using the US Dollar to destroy foreign corporations to gain a competitive advantage? Or better yet, using the NSA to do so. How far should protectionism go?

Should the US use the dollar to start massive state enterprises, printing dollars to pay for it all, to buy up foreign corporations. For example, maybe the US should create a massive potash conglomerate from a state owned enterprise backed by the Fed directly. Then use some USD printing to merge up with other big potash players around the world, and use political leverage and threats to force other nations into allowing those mergers. Japan for example has been buying up its own stock market, maybe the US should go a step further than that. If China wants to compete using big state owned enterprises, why shouldn't the US respond in kind, and then some? China also directly funds non-state owned enterprises through various banking channels. Maybe the Fed should be providing 0% interest loans to US corporations to advantage them to acquire specific major foreign competitors for essentially no cost.

Should the Fed provide Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. with a nearly unlimited budget to begin manufacturing all of their hardware & components in the US, along with perpetual subsidies to keep that production local? Might as well take advantage of available leverage.

If not, then why is it ok for China's government to set up intentional barriers to entry or to encourage rather drastic dumping policies in several big industries? Should foreign companies not be allowed to buy majority ownership positions in domestic US corporations? Should the US Government deny all attempts by foreign corporations to buy domestic corporations? Why is it considered ok for China to directly advantage and subsidize so many massive state enterprises, if the US and other nations aren't supposed to behave that way?

Should the US Government look the other way, while a major US entrepreneur steals tens of billions of dollars from a Chinese company, as Jack Ma did with Yahoo and AliPay? Is that the kind of protectionist playing field that is desirable?

Facebook, Twitter, Google and numerous other US companies have been directly blocked from competing in China in all sorts of ways. Which companies of China's should the US be blocking in response to that?