Its a win for the customer - as IT & the web is proving to be all about. Getting a taxi before was based on having access to a telephone that had available taxis. Its like Google to the Golden Pages. It's super win. It's about breaking the middle man who doesn't add value to the consumer. You can apply that rule to almost any successful web startup that has gone stratospheric - twitter (breaks the editorial control in a newspaper/media channel - lets public discuss their views than someone elses opinion about them), Google, Facebook (*cough*), YouTube, Voip services....
Hailo - It's got the right mix