Germany Un-Bans UberPop, Ride-Sharing Rolls On

Uber is a smartphone app that connects people in need of a ride with drivers willing to accept money in exchange for rides. Or it’s a fancied-up taxi dispatch service that’s out to destroy the world’s livery services. What it is depends on who you ask. Germany’s taxi drivers asked the Frankfurt Regional Court, which this week allowed Uber to do business in Germany again.

One of the weird side effects of that temporary injunction is that all of the publicity was great for Uber. Signups and app downloads more than tripled. Like most other areas that the ride-sharing services like UberX/UberPop, Lyft, and Sidecar have expanded to that already had well-established taxi services, cab drivers in Germany say that Uber is out to put them out of business.

However, a judge doesn’t agree that the service needs to be shut down while the case makes it way through the country’s legal system, and overturned the ban earlier today. Is the ride-sharing service “unfair competition,” as the cabbies allege, and thus illegal? Maybe, but expediting the case through the courts and rushing to shut down UberPop wasn’t appropriate.

German court lifts temporary injunction against car service Uber [Deutsche Welle] (via Pando)

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist