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Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

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Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#101

Post by Whitestrake »

ohazi wrote: post #65
apetresc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a lot of us want is more granularity. I'm totally fine with their per-GB pricing, but if I (as a personal user) want more than 1TB, it is literally impossible to buy it from Dropbox. I would have to upgrade to a business plan, which makes no sense as I'm not a business. Basically, there are only 3 Dropbox tiers: 0, 1TB, or infinity.

I gave up and just started using AWS S3 directly. I use a few GB, pay a few pennies for storage, a few more pennies for bandwidth if I'm moving stuff around, and that's it. I've never paid more than $10/month, and it's usually under $1/month.

What client(s) do you use to access your bucket? What kind of sharing features do they have? Is there a web frontend? And how do you deal with eventual consistency?

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#102

Post by mafuyu »

gcb0 wrote: post #89
raiyu wrote: post #38

The fact that Dropbox's revenue is well above Box's if the rumors in the article are true is a great positive sign. As is being cash flow positive which would indicate that if they are burning cash it isn't at the rate of 2x revenue that Box has been a victim of. However, the vision they are selling will not come to pass. That of them being a collaborative platform. Google docs, slack, and a myriad of other tools hav…

Aren't they rushing to disable public folders just so they can write off their biggest money drain from the books just for the IPO? this is «any IPOed startup from last decade» all over again.

Shame, too, as it was the Dropbox feature I used the most. I hate having to link people to the clunky, slow-to-load viewer interface that Dropbox presents when you make a share link. I also don't want comments! (which always takes up an entire sidebar and has to be manually closed)

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#103

Post by gumby »

sjg007 wrote: post #91
raiyu wrote: post #38

The fact that Dropbox's revenue is well above Box's if the rumors in the article are true is a great positive sign. As is being cash flow positive which would indicate that if they are burning cash it isn't at the rate of 2x revenue that Box has been a victim of. However, the vision they are selling will not come to pass. That of them being a collaborative platform. Google docs, slack, and a myriad of other tools hav…

Honestly whoever can make the easiest way to share photos between iPhones will win. That and just store all of my photos forever.

You know Apple already offers that, right? I don't want to sound like an Apple shill so I will avoid naming the feature; apple is big enough that if they can't get the word out it's not my problem!

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#104

Post by gumby »

I find Dropbox by far the most straightforward and convenient of the cloud storage providers (DB, Box, iCloud, OneDrive, Google in order of exponentially increasing frustration level). But at the end of the day it's just a feature. I assume they haven't yet gone public because they have been tap dancing hoping to find a way to break out of the feature ghetto.

If there were an easy way to attach to S3, iot devices, etc (credentials management is a pain) they could probably go out on the strength of that.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#105

Post by Steeeve »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #9
B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #4

Does anyone here still use Dropbox? (I signed up in 2009, and probably last touched it in 2011 ...) P.S. their studiously ignoring user-side encryption was a factor - if I'm getting my files exposed, might as well go with the big default services.

I pay $100/year for Pro. Cheaper and easier to have 1TB of remote storage than SD cards, USB sticks, etc, and no excessive bandwidth charges such that AWS has. EDIT: I don't care if my files are encrypted. EDIT 2: Dropbox sync is rock solid. Every experience with the Google Drive sync client has been trash. I can (and do) pay for convenience.

Amazon Cloud drive is $60/year for unlimited space.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#106

Post by jeff_tyrrill »

amelius wrote: post #43

I wonder why we haven't seen good open-source imitations of Dropbox yet, and why there isn't a good open protocol for file sharing. The last such protocol I've heard of is WebDAV, but it seemed to have been neglected by OS implementers (Apple's implementation was particularly bad). Also WebDAV was missing many modern features.

The value that Dropbox provides isn't the sharing, nor the protocol - it's the failure-free merging algorithm (I intentionally said "merging" not "syncing"). The magic is what happens locally - not on the network.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#107

Post by edanm »

new299 wrote: post #99

I'm slightly shocked that tech-types who in general seem to be against mass state sponsored surveillance continue to support Dropbox. Dropbox appointed Condoleezza Rice to their board. Rice supports warrentless surveillance [1]. They've made no moves to encrypt data service side. I hope their IPO fails spectacularly so that support of warrentless surveillance does not become the norm in tech companies. [1] Condoleezz…

I think most people recognize that they don't necessarily agree with everyone, especially when it comes to politics, and that refusing to work with people because you dislike their politics is, in general, not a smart thing to do. Not to mention not supporting companies because one of their board members takes a position you dislike on an issue.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#108

Post by ternaryoperator »

new299 wrote: post #99

I'm slightly shocked that tech-types who in general seem to be against mass state sponsored surveillance continue to support Dropbox. Dropbox appointed Condoleezza Rice to their board. Rice supports warrentless surveillance [1]. They've made no moves to encrypt data service side. I hope their IPO fails spectacularly so that support of warrentless surveillance does not become the norm in tech companies. [1] Condoleezz…

> they've made no moves to encrypt data service side

From their website[0]: "Dropbox file data is stored in discrete file blocks that are fragmented and encrypted using 256-bit AES."

[0] https://www.dropbox.com/security

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#109

Post by toomuchtodo »

Steeeve wrote: post #105
toomuchtodo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay $100/year for Pro. Cheaper and easier to have 1TB of remote storage than SD cards, USB sticks, etc, and no excessive bandwidth charges such that AWS has. EDIT: I don't care if my files are encrypted. EDIT 2: Dropbox sync is rock solid. Every experience with the Google Drive sync client has been trash. I can (and do) pay for convenience.

Amazon Cloud drive is $60/year for unlimited space.

It's only unlimited until it's not. I prefer someone who's primary business is what I'm paying for also.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#110

Post by tehlike »

sjg007 wrote: post #91
raiyu wrote: post #38

The fact that Dropbox's revenue is well above Box's if the rumors in the article are true is a great positive sign. As is being cash flow positive which would indicate that if they are burning cash it isn't at the rate of 2x revenue that Box has been a victim of. However, the vision they are selling will not come to pass. That of them being a collaborative platform. Google docs, slack, and a myriad of other tools hav…

Honestly whoever can make the easiest way to share photos between iPhones will win. That and just store all of my photos forever.

try giving google photos a try. I have been using google photos for a long time now (it used to be called picasa).

PS: I am a google employee, but my opinion on google photos literally has no bias. I don't use Iphone, I own android, so YMMV.

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