Uber Slayer: How China’s Didi Beat the Ride-Hailing Superpower
The article is rather light on details on what Didi actually did better, but from using Uber as a foreigner in China, I could see significant problems in Uber&#x27;s product execution:<p>1. The Android app continues to use Google Maps which is Great Firewall blocked, meaning I had to use a VPN to load uncached tiles.<p>2. Uber in turn IP blocks EC2, preventing me from using my main VPN while in app.<p>3. Entities on the map are shifted by the GCJ-02 offset (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...</a>), meaning entities on the map are shifted by 0.5 miles (look at those cars driving on parkland: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;hhkrjyka5uq0pfb&#x2F;PeopleUber.png?dl=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;s&#x2F;hhkrjyka5uq0pfb&#x2F;PeopleUber.png?dl=...</a>)<p>4. User support was absolutely non-existent.  After I responded to an automatic email from the local community manager inviting me to ask any questions, I only received an automated emails telling me I won&#x27;t be helped.<p>5. Help pages in the app on Uber China tell me to see the Chinese translation, with no actual link to said translation.<p>While the foreigner use-case in China is niche, the sheer amount of obvious (and easily resolvable) problems I ran into suggests that Uber has organizational problems ensuring both drivers and customers have good experiences in foreign countries.<p>One blog from Jan 2014 highlights how bad the execution was at launch:  <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.larrysalibra.com&#x2F;5-problems-with-uber-in-china-and-why-i-love-it&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.larrysalibra.com&#x2F;5-problems-with-uber-in-china-a...</a> - the most absurd being that Uber (at that time) only accepted US-branded credit cards which few Chinese nationals hold.