Uber, the sedan-by-smartphone company, won’t be its usual self when it expands to Germany.
Coming off a year in which it bested the D.C. government in a game of regulatory chicken, Uber is planning the next wave of its expansion. The sedan-by-smartphone company is planning on expanding its service to a host of international cities, as evidenced by job openings it advertised today in Tokyo; Stockholm; Milan; Melbourne, Australia and a “multi-country” office based in Belgium.
Alex Priest, an employee of Uber’s D.C. office, tweeted out that the company is also looking for employees in Germany. And while Uber’s brand of high-end, on-demand livery service might seem like a natural fit for Berlin and Frankfurt, expanding into Germany presents Uber with a slight linguistic dilemma. After all, the company itself uses a very common German word as its name (save a diareses).
We jokingly asked if Uber’s German slogan would be “Uber über alles,” after a line in Germany’s national anthem. Uber, the car company, often likes to boast about its superiority over normal cab services, so such a tag line would fit its corporate braggadocio. But Travis Kalanick, Uber’s founder and chief executive, was quick to respond that in Germany, Uber will not be Uber. Instead, it will be called “Super.”
The local name change makes sense, as in English, the prefix “über-” is often used in place of “super-,” though in proper usage it denotes “over” or “above” as often as it does outright superiority of a subject.