1) I'm not "concluding" that Uber is pushing out Lyft. I'm stating that from Pando's ceaseless coverage of all things Uber over the past 18 months. You're right- most drivers for Lyft also drive for Uber. However, these are two startups that aren't making profit and the bubble is about to pop. Only the strong will survive. It's not appropriate to model either as regular businesses considering that the fundamentals of both can be completely out of whack and still garner investment cash.

2) Didi is every bit as illegal as Uber, but the torch and pitchforks reserved for Uber rarely hit Lyft. The laws will change, the question is how they will change; when they're designed to act against a bad actor such as Uber, you end up with the company being banned from Austin. The cab companies actually tried the Uber thing with an app called "Taxi magic"; if it didn't suck so hard the only difference would be price.

3) It's a bad idea to form an alliance with a company that has demonstrated disloyalty and bad acting. There is no good press for Uber. Apple doesn't need any bad press right now. Uber, for its part, has demonstrated an ability to generate bad press on a weekly basis.

4) It matters why Microsoft invested in Apple because we're discussing business. The business reason for the Apple investment was related to legality and anti-trust. It is therefore not applicable in this case.