The company was created by a team at Microsoft in 1996 and later merged with properties at the media company IAC, then spun off as an independent public company in 2005, with Mr. Khosrowshahi as C.E.O. Ben Thompson, who writes the tech newsletter Stratechery, argued in his Monday edition that Mr. Khosrowshahi deserves credit for recognizing the mistake and working to repair it. This history, Mr. Thompson wrote, might inform how Mr. Khosrowshahi approaches Uber. In the same way that Booking.com became popular with hotel guests because it had the largest inventory of hotels, Mr. Khosrowshahi might understand Uber’s secret is its popularity with riders. That Mr. Khosrowshahi did not do that suggests he has a very different appetite for risk.

Source: New York Times August 28, 2017 21:23 UTC