The Greatest App of All Time Day 15: Uber vs. Yo

Welcome back to Gizmodo’s March Madness bracket challenge to name the greatest app of all time! With over 65 percent of the vote, HQ Trivia soundly defeated VSCO in yesterday’s competition. Today, we have one of the world’s most evil apps going up against one of the most harmless.

If you’re just tuning in, you can read all about our selection criteria for this historic contest right here. Check out the full bracket of contestants embedded below. And as always, if you think we missed your personal favorite app of all time, yell at us in the comments. Now, let’s get into today’s contestants.

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Uber was a pioneer in at least two ways. It taught Silicon Valley that you can defy regulations as long as you embed yourself in society fast enough. And it became the poster child of burning through investor money for years as long as you make big enough promises. Founded in 2009, the company posted its first annual profit just last year. It spent over a decade stringing investors and the public along with promises of self-driving cars and private helicopters. It managed to reach that milestone by abandoning everything that made Uber a futuristic tech company and focusing on being the glorified cab service it’s always been.

Despite countless articles, best-selling books, a popular TV miniseries documenting all of Uber’s bad behavior, people still seem to love it. Or they at least tolerate it because it’s convenient. And I’m sure there’ve been some edge cases where it filled a hole in rural areas or improved the lives of people with disabilities. So if you want to vote for Uber, we’re making that possible.

Up against Uber, we have Yo, the short-lived app that let you send your friends a notification that just said “Yo.” A Yo could mean a lot of things. The sender might be asking if you want to hang out, reminding you about a forgotten appointment, or checking to see if you want to hang out. Yes, a text message would be more practical but the beauty of the Yo was that it came with no obligations. You might know exactly what the sender wants and ignore them without it feeling like a snub, or you could say Yo back. All a Yo ultimately meant was “I’m thinking of you” and that was nice.

Yo came and went without really bothering anyone. It did get hacked once, which resulted in a lot of people getting a lot of Yos out of nowhere and then the company hired the hacker as a security consultant. The app shut down in 2018 and was pretty much a ghost town by then. There is an imposter on the App Store called “Yo!,” but don’t fall for it.

So, reader, what’ll it be? Do you want to send Uber to the next round, or will you say Yo one last time?