For me, “disrupt” is forever tainted by all the startups whose only real innovation was aggressively breaking the law until they were too big to police.
Just breaking the law is not disrupting. Disrupting requires broad support from the public, which is aware that laws are being broken and are fine with it - meaning the particular laws in place are ripe for questioning at the very least.
Uber isn’t what it is because they broke the law, but because the vast public approve of their actions.
We used to see innovative disruption that would grow the pie. Generating large and broad benefits, and capturing a fairly small fraction for the company.
it's been dead for a few years now. At this point it's just standard monopoly behavior -- weasel in, take over, dominate and extra maximum value until real competition happens or the government/regulations come into play.
I remember taxis before Uber/Lyft. They had a whole series of problems.
Predicability - You wouldn't know how much the fare would be when getting into a taxi. In addition, driving indirect routes to charge more and claiming the ride cost more than the normal fare were common scams. Uber/Lyft tells you the price before you order the ride.
Ease of payment - taxis had card machines pre Uber but the machines were frequently "broken" unless the rider spent time arguing that they had no other way to pay. Then, in a miraculous turn of events, the machine recovered.
Accountability - If a taxi driver stole from you, you had essentially no chance of finding them again, especially as a tourist. Uber/Lyft stores this information and surfaces aggregate reviews.
Sometimes, or oftentimes, the law is used against the citizens. Ride sharing is a real improvement in a lot of european countries.
I suggest watching this with subtitles, while it is a comedic skit taken to the extreme you can see how taxi drivers were viewed before ride sharing apps disrupted the taxi industry.
Uber broke the law that protects traditional taxi drivers from having competition under the guise of passenger safety (taxi drivers have the same driver's license as any other driver, no additional safety certs). The public was way too happy to use Uber and that's why it's now forbidden where I live (a country in central EU).
