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Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

blogs.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#171

Post by joering2 »

exelius wrote: post #113
slang800 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hardly a reason to not open-source. You're not required to provide support just because you release your source code. Even a dump of their repositories would be useful for people who are interested in Mailbox.

No; but often the server components are heavily tied to some other proprietary libraries that they're not ready to open source. They could remove all proprietary code from their codebase, but that costs money - likely more than they were willing to spend on this product. Unless open source is part of your marketing strategy (which means the effort would have a budget), it's really difficult to open source an existing…

That's a speculation on your part.. and PR spin-off on theirs.

Nobody asked them to support it, or whatever. Just dump the damn thing online so others can pick up and continue to "help fight your inbox to zero".

Clearly their intention here was profits and since they didn't see any - they kill it off. They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email either.

I wanted to get my company (over 3,000 users) off DropBox long time ago after each update comes with new issues. But this just broke camel's back. I will make the switch happen this weekend.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#172

Post by ghaff »

azinman2 wrote: post #149
ckluis wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d pay to have delete actually delete email completely (not just from my inbox, but from all as well).

@softawre: He's asking for it to delete on the receivers side too. I think certain enterprise-y email solutions have this, but there's no way to have that happen in the distributed email ecosystem unless all your messages were just links to a website that could delete the content centrally, or similarly, jpg's of rendered text that were somehow forced to be remotely fetched each time.

And, indeed, that sort of functionality runs counter to the idea that once something has been sent to me, it's "mine" to keep/delete/whatever without someone else having the ability to change or delete it without my permission.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#173

Post by ctingom »

kirklove wrote: post #87
racl101 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm not sure that's true (see: Sparrow). I just don't think there is enough demand for people to want to pay for an email client." Yeah, this is definitely what I saw with Sparrow. For it to become popular it has to be adopted by a substantial number of people. However, I find that only really tech savvy people cared about Sparrow and its streamlined interface. When I showed it to other people, they were reluctant t…

Same. Sparrow is still my favorite email app on the Mac. Sadly had to give up on it with iOS as it just got super wonky. Will use it as long as it works on OSX.

Still using Sparrow, but wondering if it works on El Capitan? Does anybody use it on El Capitan?

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#174

Post by dubroff »

snyp wrote: post #75
nathan_f77 wrote: post #36

I only recently switched to Mailbox because I got tired of an annoying UI bug in Sparrow that was never going to be fixed. I was just starting to get used to Mailbox. What mail app should I be using now?

i think we're better of going for a paid email client instead of depending on these free ones.. that get acquired and shut down

For what it's worth, Sparrow was a paid client (~$10) with a free version that had ads and limited functionality.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#175

Post by Eric_WVGG »

chungy wrote: post #126
27182818284 wrote: post #7

I've been a Dropbox user for--I don't know how long. A long time. I would say since...maybe 2009? I do not know what those products are for sure. By their names I'm guessing something with photos and something with email. I feel like an old evangelist like myself would have known more about those products. Thus, I wonder if this was a marketing failure as much as a product-market-fit failure.

Likewise, I've had Dropbox since around 2009 or 2010, never even heard of Mailbox until now. I actively avoided Carousel solely because of how much the mobile Dropbox app was trying to push it on me, my reaction was more-or-less "What? I'm not changing my workflow." and ignored it. Might have been a shame, but it didn't feel welcoming with how they tried to do that...

A while back Dropbox said that they had grander ambitions that being a single-product (Dropbox the service) company, rather they wanted to be a sort of Microsoft, Lotus or Borland of the current generation.

This statement preceded the acquisition of Carousel (a sort of alternative to iPhoto and Picasa built on Dropbox [the service]) Mailbox (an alternative email client, no technical connection to Dropbox [the service]).

So yeah maybe this strategy isn’t panning out? I dunno, just irritated that the default move for abandonware isn’t open-sourcing it.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#176

Post by wpietri »

mbesto wrote: post #157
untog wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my point. Silicon Valley rewards "go big or go bust", it doesn't reward "small, sustainable business". I don't for a second blame the founders of Mailbox for doing what they did. When the market creates a strong set of incentives like this you can't really expect anyone to do anything other than take the $100m. But this is the side-effect.

But this totally negates your point about "there isn't enough money in an email app". Clearly Dropbox thought there was at least a $100MM opportunity...either talent to produce $100MM+ in value, customers to convert into $100MM+ value, or staving off competition that would result in $100MM in potential loss.

This seems like a too-generous take.

Dropbox could have thought that and just been wrong. Even in the normal economy, per The Economist about half of all acquisitions destroy value. In our little hothouse, I'd expect a much larger percentage of value-destroying takeovers.

But there are plenty of other reasons deals get done than a company-wide coherent calculation of economic value. E.g., I've heard of acquisitions happening because a CEO needs to demonstrate to the board that they're doing something. Or incentive structures set up to reward an M&A team based on how many deals they do. Or executives wanting to bring in their old buddies from another company. Or, "gosh, money is so cheap right now we'd better spend it because our competitors are spending."

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#177

Post by thescriptkiddie »

lemevi wrote: post #160
austenallred wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll elaborate on their behalf: "That would be hard and expensive and we have money to make."

God forbid anyone make any money. Where I work we feed our engineers on the appreciation of free users. That's the only way to fly. Self-entitled much?

God forbid anyone share abandoned code. Where I work we incinerate anything potentially useful when we're done with it. That way no dirty freeloaders can take advantage of it.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#178

Post by potatolicious »

mbesto wrote: post #157
untog wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my point. Silicon Valley rewards "go big or go bust", it doesn't reward "small, sustainable business". I don't for a second blame the founders of Mailbox for doing what they did. When the market creates a strong set of incentives like this you can't really expect anyone to do anything other than take the $100m. But this is the side-effect.

But this totally negates your point about "there isn't enough money in an email app". Clearly Dropbox thought there was at least a $100MM opportunity...either talent to produce $100MM+ in value, customers to convert into $100MM+ value, or staving off competition that would result in $100MM in potential loss.

> "Clearly Dropbox thought there was at least a $100MM opportunity"

The opportunity was the team, not the product they were producing.

Say you had a room full of math prodigies, but all they were doing was watching TV all day. You hire these math prodigies for $X and put them to work solving math problems - this doesn't mean that watching TV is worth $X, in fact it likely means the opposite, that their value is underutilized by whatever they're doing right now.

So there isn't enough money in making email apps, but a team capable of producing a great email app can be put to use doing things that do make a lot of money - but it sure isn't making email apps.

And that's unfortunate, because as users we're missing out on a lot of great products. The dark side of the immense growth in software (and immense growth in software salaries) is that entire products and services are no longer economical, even though we'd all love to see them. The VC system that drives these early acquisitions and acquihires is just one more factor among many that limit the field of what can be economically produced.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#180

Post by torbit »

rodgerd wrote: post #49
benjarrell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still using Sunrise to this day, is there an announcement about it being discontinued?

Apparently so: http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/10/microsoft-announces-plans... (Unwelcome) news to me.

so Sunrise gets sunset :)
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