DoorDash is acquiring Instacart for $17B

(about.doordash.com)

58 points | by DeepLogin 54 minutes ago

8 comments

  • Liuser 4 minutes ago
    Uber does both food and grocery delivery on top of rideshare.

    I wonder if DD is going to make a play for Lyft next, which they’re already in close partnership. The market consolidating to these 2 players (Uber and DoorDash) seems natural(?), for lack of better terms. Either way, it wouldn’t surprise me.

  • jesse_dot_id 33 minutes ago
    That should definitely not go through but probably will.
    • nonethewiser 17 minutes ago
      Why shouldnt it go through?
      • mtswish 16 minutes ago
        Monopolies are bad for consumers
      • slantedview 16 minutes ago
        It's clearly anti-competitive.
        • fzysingularity 14 minutes ago
          It doesn’t seem like they have monopoly here given how big Uber Eats is?
          • chomp 11 minutes ago
            Has nothing to do with monopolies, having the market slowly condense into one mega company does not create competition and results in higher prices for the consumer.
          • pavel_lishin 5 minutes ago
            A duopoly isn't great, either.
      • troupo 14 minutes ago
        A company with 60% market share gobbles up a company with 25% market share.
  • jesse_dot_id 32 minutes ago
    Food/grocery delivery should be a municipal service like garbage/recycling with no tipping and service provided by full time government employees with good benefits and use of city vehicles. Many, many new jobs, and a public service that everybody would love.
    • hermannj314 22 minutes ago
      But DoorDash has a patent on giving you a deal if you combine your order with another restaurant, and giving you a higher price unless it determines that pisses you off and then backing off a little. Those contributions to humanity must be protected.
    • tkahnoski 9 minutes ago
      I think the argument here is if you allow delivery to become a local monopoly like other utilities then just make it a utility. However as-is, there's little barrier to entry on adding delivery to any business and it should probably stay that way.

      Is it necessary? No. Unfortunately I don't think would be great as a utility because quality of service matters and unlike the actual utilities, there's a lot of arbitrariness to quality of the service.

      Availability of vehicles for delivery purposes is an interesting proposition. Charge doordash a tax or fee to maintain a fleet of vehicles that would open flexibility in the job market. (Consider this for ride-sharing as well... basically just reinvented the taxi medallion system but maybe with less restriction).

      • drdec 0 minutes ago
        > I think the argument here is if you allow delivery to become a local monopoly

        What monopoly? I can barely remember all the companies in this space, GrubHub, UberEats, PostMates, etc.

    • levl289 26 minutes ago
      I don’t want to be taxed for someone else’s burrito taxi.
      • kccqzy 22 minutes ago
        Many cities already fund taxis. The city of Sunnyvale provides a taxi service under the name of Beam for $3.50 per ride. It does not seem like a big stretch to extend this to food and grocery delivery. If you don’t want to be taxed for some service, you can always choose to vote to get rid of that service or move to a place without that service. I welcome more experimentation in municipal services.
        • paxy 9 minutes ago
          Cool I don’t want to pay for those either. Spend tax dollars on mass transit.
        • mtoner23 14 minutes ago
          transportation is treated as a necessity to a good life. I'm not sure restaurant delivery should be treated the same.
      • jesse_dot_id 24 minutes ago
        The cool thing about democracy is that it only matters what the majority wants.
        • DaSHacka 10 minutes ago
          Exactly, evident in how a taxpayer-subsidized DoorDash is a naive techbro pipe-dream and will stay that way, as it's predictably unpopular.
        • parineum 7 minutes ago
          The the majority want what you're proposing? I doubt it.
      • cyanydeez 24 minutes ago
        You are taxed by civilization.

        What you mean is you want to live in one pond and shit in other peoples because they economicaly immoral.

    • chiatruntime 13 minutes ago
      Must be trolling -- 80-85% of US garbage service is contracted out to private companies. You want Anytown USA to have a contract with Doordash?
      • jesse_dot_id 0 minutes ago
        Contracts with as many private companies as possible using something similar to the Doordash app, ideally.
    • kspacewalk2 27 minutes ago
      You want to socialize the costs of pizza delivery?
      • faefox 3 minutes ago
        We're socializing the costs of everything else. I'd much rather my tax dollars go to pizza delivery (and single-payer healthcare) than lining the pockets of tech monopolists and the military-industrial complex.
      • jesse_dot_id 21 minutes ago
        I basically want to socialize the costs of just about everything if people find it to be a useful public service. I'd like a single-payer streaming service like ITV, too. It gets very annoying to be gouged on all sides by corporations that don't care if the service is good or not, only how much money they can extract from people regardless of their station in life.
        • Fernicia 6 minutes ago
          So TV licenses are not gouging, but a Netflix subscription is?

          You live in a fantasy land if you think streaming services are not competitive and providing better value for money than public broadcasting companies.

    • ibejoeb 15 minutes ago
      Why would any of these jobs be new? People are already doing them. Would you not just reduce the earning potential by removing tips?
    • Jabrov 24 minutes ago
      Why?
    • nonethewiser 19 minutes ago
      Is this satire? It sounds exactly like what someone would say if they were trying to parody a big government liberal. The idea of turning an expensive, optional convenience into a government-run service and touting job creatoin is a bit too on the nose.
  • swed420 51 minutes ago
    Surely any benefits will trickle down to employees and end users.
    • kwanbix 6 minutes ago
      How much money do this companies plan to extort from restaurants, who will try to pass it to customers, to pay such a big chunk of money?
  • browningstreet 6 minutes ago
    I’ve literally never ordered from any of these 3 companies.

    I do wonder what percentage of their orders are McDonalds. I lived near one and the car traffic of vehicles with delivery placards was significant.

    Which makes me wonder about pricing pressure that is often reported re: McDonalds, and yet people end up paying $30-40 for a $15 McDonalds order.

    Don’t get it.

  • ChrisArchitect 45 minutes ago
  • josefritzishere 37 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • timodesks 54 minutes ago
    [flagged]