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Uber decided to take out Postmates – by buying it

The delivery wars strike again.

Uber driver at airport
Image: Unsplash

In the cut-throat food delivery market, what do you do when you’re losing market share to your competition? Easy, you take them out by putting in a takeover bid. Uber might have been unsuccessful in grabbing Grubhub, but succeeded this week, bagging Postmates with a huge deal worth $2.65 billion in stock.

That’s according to both Bloomberg and the New York Times, with the expectation that the merger will help the not-a-taxi-company to compete better against rival Doordash, who just purchased Caviar not long ago. Whew, pretty soon, food delivery will be gobbled up by the giants, and we’ll have a Comcast/Verizon situation again where food delivery is handled only by major conglomerates. Yikes.

Anyway, while this is likely to help Uber’s share price, it probably won’t help it actually become profitable any quicker (if ever). Sure, now the company will have better service to the southwest US and the Los Angeles area, but it’ll still be a distant second to DoorDash, which has so far foiled any chances to catch up.

https://twitter.com/wilfredchan/status/1279973094246043648?s=20

So what does this mean to customers? Probably nothing, apart from the app you order through. For gig workers, the shrinking pool of companies will likely result in their already crappy working conditions deteriorating, losing one of the only methods they had to control their own income. Oh, and restaurants are probably going to get squeezed for higher fees, as without any competition to keep things in check, that’s just how it goes.

Anyway, since the future is going to be bleak once the delivery services finish gobbling up all the pie, maybe try supporting local restaurants by ordering takeout, through their own website, not that number you found on that popular food aggregating site. Who knows, that may make all the difference in keeping your favorite spot open.

Are you a Postmates user? What do you think of this deal? Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere. His hobbies include photography, animation, and hoarding Reddit gold.

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