Taxis once provided a good service. Just 20 years ago, you needed a specialist to take you to random places in a new city.

Then a little thing called the "GPS" was invented. Uber takes advantage of the GPS and anybody can now plot a course to anywhere without specialist knowledge of a city.

The strange thing is, people seem to have forgotten what life was like before GPS.

Good point.

In Vienna (Austria), taxi drivers had to pass a pretty tough exam which required intimate knowledge of the cities streets.

A good driver still makes a difference in the age of GPS, because you can often safe quite some time by avoiding certain points of congestion and factoring in traffic.

But with GPS that incorporates (live) traffic data, the additional value is a lot smaller.

Fares are still the same, you just don't notice it because a VC is subsidizing it for you.

The day that ends, it will be back to business.

Think of Uber as a taxi company subsidizing your travel for a few years. Things will be back to normal once the VC realizes they can't make profits until they charge customers like other taxi companies.

Why would fares be the same when they don't have to fund the capital cost of a medallion?

By the way, according to the article, Uber is roughly breaking even in the US (lost some money last quarter, made money the quarter before).