Steve "Woz" Wozniak, the Apple co-founder who worked alongside Steve Jobs to bring the world its first Macintosh, is concerned that Uber, the first ride sharing service to reach mass worldwide appeal, is going to be a monopoly.
And naturally, as monopolies go, Uber is bound to take advantage of its workforce, so speaks the Woz.
"I do have concerns about Uber becoming a monopoly. Like a lot of people, I have some distrust of Uber and how their drivers don't really realize necessarily at first that they aren't really making much money, maybe losing money on the wear and tear of their cars," Wozniak remarked on Monday in Sydney, Australia, at the Future Transport Summit.
The backstory as to why Woz was speaking at a transport summit in the first place isn't making headlines, but his distrust of the popular ride sharing app is especially as it marks certain regions of Australia as part of its global network.
Back at home in the U.S., Woz does reveal that he tries to make use of Lyft when he can instead of taking Uber.
"That's how I think of Uber: Not very nice thoughts," he further commented.
The general manager of Uber Australia, David Rohrsheim, had a few choice words in response to Wozniak's sentiments for the day.
"It has to be a good deal for partners or otherwise they won't use the platform," Rohrsheim rebuked.
If it were up to Wozniak, there would be around four to five other choices in key cities around the world so Uber has more competition. In Australia, the lone competitor to Uber, a service called GoCar by a company called GoCatch, offers the same features as Uber itself, CNET points out. It just goes by a different name and is run by a different board.
Nonetheless, despite what Wozniak observes, there is growing competition against Uber in other parts of the world. In China, there's Didi Kuaidi. In Southeast Asia, there's Grab. In India, there Ola Cabs. In the US, of course, there's Lyft.
Photo: Alper Çuğun | Flickr
