So a couple three things -

1) The other article was posted by me.

2) Uber, Lyft and Didi are dependent on network effects - ten Uber cars in a metropolis are much less than 10% as valuable as a hundred Uber cars in a metropolis, and a thousand Uber cars in a metropolis are more than ten times as valuable as a hundred. As such, when two thirds are Uber and one third is Lyft, Lyft is sucking down more than 33% of Uber's business and Uber is doing a lot more damage to Lyft's business such that eventually, Lyft will die.

3) This is what happened in China: Yes, Didi spent a lot of money beating Uber. But they ran Uber out on a rail. This is behind a paywall:

To wit: Chang asked Liu how Didi thinks about global expansion, and Liu had to politely remind Chang just how absurd of a question that is. In 2015, Didi did 40% more rides than Uber has done in its entire life. It’s now the second largest commerce platform in China. It is in 400 cities. And it’s penetrated the market by… just 1.1%. Just upping that to 5.5% would be some 60 million rides per day. It’s currently doing about 10 million a day. For perspective, 10 million rides per day is eight times the entire ridesharing market in North America.

4) Effectively, Didi Chuxing has already creamed Uber in China. There are a number of reasons for that, but a principal one is that Uber are dicks. There's a fairly astonishing Wikipedia article that simply lists everywhere Uber has been banned. And not to put too fine a point on it, but all ridesharing services are de facto illegal. They violate the livery/hire ecosystem everywhere they go. Chances are good that laws will change to accommodate a more efficient system than traditional taxi services, but Uber is a prime-time thrower of elbows. Which, from a social darwinism standpoint doesn't much matter but when you're throwing billions of dollars around, it's best not to spend it on corporate cultures that refine for sociopathy.

5) I remember Steve Jobs introducing Bill Gates. It's the scene they chose to start Pirates of Silicon Valley with. Something people who weren't paying attention to tech press back then don't realize is that Microsoft invested in Apple in order to stave off monopoly concerns. The Justice Department was already circling around Microsoft, looking for a reason to break the company up. Microsoft had already purchased large swathes of land in order to build new campuses in preparation. The Apple gambit was effective - for $150m in non-voting stock, Microsoft managed to forestall the suit for four years.

So you have some valid points, but the larger picture is all about the network effects. There's one Google. There's one Facebook. There's one Snapchat. You gotta be the one. In the US, it's Uber.

But Apple feels like fucking that up.