百度投资Uber抢占中国市场

Over the past year, US taxi company Uber has certainly made a name for itself worldwide, as its service is now available in 53 countries. Uber is the ride-sharing-private car service. With it, all you have to do is tap a button to get a lift.

It has been dealing with ongoing public relations fiascos.

A 6-year-old girl was hit and killed by an Uber-contracted driver and then details emerged on the website: Operation SLOG- the driver recruitment marketing program.

Competitors accused Uber of secretly poaching drivers and using its own employees to cancel thousands of competitor's rides.

"They are as sharped-elbowed a company as any out there. They go wherever they want and do what they want. And the question is will there be backlash against them," says Jerry Michalski, founder of Relationship Economy Expedition.

In September, co-Founder Travis Kalanick addressed Uber's reputation as the bad guy.

"When you get to a place where people perceive you as the big guy or the man, you approach things differently and you have to communicate differently and we're not there yet," says Kalanick.

Uber even hired former Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe to be its Senior Vice President of Policy and Strategy. 

Since then, Uber has only become even more controversial. Reporters accused the company of intimidation and tracking them through Uber. And then, rape allegations against

Uber-contracted drivers surfaced in both Boston and New Delhi.

But business is business, as the company recently disclosed a valuation of more than 41-billion dollars.

"local transportation is a one trillion dollar market. So if you think about a one trillion dollar potential, then the 41 billion can be justifiable. In addition, I think Uber is the first player to introduce this service so they probably have the largest market share today so they can demand the market cap they want at this moment," says Jackie Yang, managing director of Translink Capital.

Uber is already in China, but now gets some added firepower with Chinese-internet giant Baidu reportedly investing 600 million.

"After the Uber service become popular in the United States, there are copycats started to offer similar service. There are three major companies in China that I know of. One is independent company raised over 100 million dollars already, the other two - one if affiliated with TenCent, the other with Alibaba. So logically for Baidu to be associated with some service company in this area makes sense," Yang says.

Yang says Baidu will be a big help to Uber especially with its mapping services.

He also says the global taxi industry has always had safety issues, but what's different is that government agencies shared responsibility, while nowadays, it appears to be Uber bearing the responsibility of regulating Uber.