"Is Uber/Lyft the starting point for calling a car or is it Android/iOS ; or is it Google Maps/Apple Maps ; or may be it is Siri/Alexa/etc." - This is an extremely good and often overlooked point. With Apple, Google, and Amazon now offering AI-powered smart-home devices (i.e., Google Home, Alexa) as well as mobile assistants like Siri and Android Assistant, they will increasingly own the first point of contact for a user when they need to hail a car. You could hail a ride without even having to open the Uber App at all, meaning that from a consumer perspective the relationship has shifted upstream to the phone OS or connected device, and Uber now becomes the behind-the-scenes middle-layer that runs the dispatch logistics. Right now, Google/Apple/Amazon operate under the guise that they are "integrating" with Uber's services, but when Google and Apple roll out their own autonomous vehicles (which they already are working on) and Amazon starts rolling out autonomous logistics (i.e., trucks and drones) then they will own both the upstream point of contact, as well as the downstream supply of cars/trucks/drones. When they have built the user behavior of people ordering directly from a phone OS or in-home device, what's to prevent them from connecting directly to their self-owned fleet and cutting out the middle layer (Uber) completely? While everyone is focused on Lyft...Uber's real competitor is one or all of the above situations. Piggy-backing off Uber in the connected home / OS integrations is as classic of an example of a trojan horse maneuver as I have ever seen.