... when your whole philosophy is beating the competition at all costs rather than building the best possible product, you create a culture in which employees will always be tempted to cross the line between aggressive and immoral, and between immoral and illegal. post 
This descent into inappropriate conduct is especially likely if you’re competing in a category where you have relatively little differentiation and a winner-take-all market structure.
Uber and Lyft are essentially offering the same product, and trying to use the same basic assets (car owners wanting to earn a little more money) to do it. Potential Uber drivers are also potential Lyft drivers, and vice versa, and the overall supply is limited.
Both services benefit from having the largest possible number of drivers on their platform and the smallest possible number on the other platform. It’s a zero-sum game to a great extent, and neither company has significant advantages over the other from a product perspective.
See Uber's Abuses