Sharing Economy

Why is something like Uber called ride-sharing to begin with? I’m not sharing my ride with anyone that coincidentally wants to travel (more or less) the same route as me. I pay somebody to drive their car first to me, and then some other place.

This is called a taxi or cab [1], there Uber is a taxi company.

At least in Germany, there used to be actual ride-sharing systems, of which the best one used to be mitfahrzentrale.de, where people would advertise what route they were planing to drive (and when) and other people could “book” a seat on that route. I don’t know if some others still exist, I haven’t used them in years.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab