Uber is in need of some good news. First scandal involving company higher-ups seeking to "dig up dirt on its [Uber's] critics," and targeting reporters. Then the abuse of power scandal when it was revealed that company execs were peeking at riders' private information. And now, this week, a rape scandal involving an Uber driver in India. Well, critics be damned, Baidu is throwing its lot (and its millions) into the Uber basket.
Bloomberg reports that Baidu plans to invest up to USD600 million in Uber, likely prepping for the app's expansion into China. While Uber is certainly already here in the mainland, it's heavily outnumbered by Didi Dache (with investment from Tencent) and Kuaidi Dache (with investment from Alibaba) users, and it looks like Baidu is hoping to challenge that.
China is a land ripe with people who need rides to places, and Uber definitely has potential. It will be competing against some very established rivals, however, as well as many Chinese cities themselves. As TechCrunch reports, Shanghai is currently considering legislation that would impact the taxi-app market, by prohibiting drivers from seeing their riders' final destination before the customers enter the cab.
Shanghai has already passed some legislation that limits taxi drivers to only use one cab-hailing app at a time - a good move in the way of driving safety (fewer distractions) but a potentially crippling move if a company like Uber wants to try and draw the users of other apps over to its service (it's all or nothing.)
We do respect Uber's propensity to give out amazing deals (sometimes even free rides!) and we hope that these Baidu bucks can encourage more of that generosity.
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