It would be a prospective purchase in regards to autonomous driving software but Uber holds a current dominating market share in ride-sharing. They could potentially single-handedly create fear of an information monopoly and be the impetus for the fed's to look at re-writing anti-trust. It's almost too sexy of an acquisition at a time when governments seem to be losing trust in them. I could be wrong obviously, but that would just seem like a bad idea in the long term, both for the price, and for the microscope it would put on them.
> It would be a prospective purchase in regards to autonomous driving software but Uber holds a current dominating market share in ride-sharing.
Do they? Specifically, do they have pricing power? Market share (even superficially dominant share) where competitors or substitute services are present and business moves in response to relative price changes isn't market power.
I would argue against that, I couldn't think of anything more powerful in an industry than a company that could use it's tens of billions of dollars in operating profit annually to fund their efforts to dominate ride-sharing as well. You are making a good point, but although there is a fine line in regards to its prospective market power until they can make it profitable and sustain it afterward, I don't see how this doesn't lead to bad things for them down the road even if it something like this did get approval
