Ride sharing company and taxi alternative, Uber has rolled into the Inland Empire, California region. In a day and age of high tech, where Google has its metaphoric fingers in most pies, the search giant is not a player in this market.
If you want to find an Uber driver in Riverside, CA for instance, doing a Google search won’t be particularly helpful. Uber has their own smartphone app that one has to download before doing a local search for drivers.
Uber is welcome in the Inland Empire since it means more jobs for an area still above the national average when it comes to unemployment (6.4-percent opposed to 5.3-percent). In a recent California Labor Commission ruling, Uber drivers are considered employees of the company and not independent contractors. This means added economic benefits for Uber drivers as well.
In another move to cut Google out of the local search loop, Uber has partnered with the popular local directory FourSquare. What this means is that FourSquare’s mobile discovery app is now integrated with the Uber app so that a user can plan their itinerary with FourSquare for visits to local restaurants, stores, and other local places and then seamlessly use Uber to find drivers to take them to and from these locations.
While San Jose and Orange County are the hotbeds for high tech in California, the Inland Empire is slowly catching up. Uber is another symbol of this increasing integration for the IE into high tech and the Internet.
References
https://www.uber.com/cities/inland-empire
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/uber-driver-is-an-employee-not-a-contractor-california-labor-commission-rules/ar-AAbIecm?ocid=ansfinreu11
http://uberpeople.net/forums/InlandEmpireRiversideCounty/
http://www.ieshineon.com/blog/2014/deals/uber-rolls-into-the-inland-empire
http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/lfmonth/rive$pds.pdf
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2015/06/01/foursquare-partners-with-uber-button/
