Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#101

Post by sidlls » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

skdotdan wrote: post #44

"Dropbox it's not a product, it's a feature". Don't get me wrong, I'm a Dropbox user myself, but I don't see their actual moat. Isn't cloud storage a commodity nowadays? IMHO they should have spent money in investing in other productivity companies in order to diversify and be able to offer a complete productivity suite.

It seems to me you're looking at this from a technically proficient developer's perspective.

It's easy (trivial) for a technically proficient person to setup any trivial cloud storage system they like on just about any provider's platform they like.

It's not so easy for anybody else (read: the vast majority of other users). Dropbox's value proposition isn't commodity storage on somebody else's servers: it's the UI/UX that backs it, and the particular implementation details.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#102

Post by kilroy123 » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

laurentdc wrote: post #35

I'm failing to see their competitive advantage. Is it the file history? Linux client? Genuinely asking, I pay 7 € / mo for OneDrive (1 TB) and I get a desktop license of Office along with that too.

Same here. I'm a paying dropbox customer, but I plan to switch in a month before my annual subscription renews. Amazon drive offers more space for only $60 USD a year.

Plus google apps offers more space than dropboxes business plan.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#103

Post by Afton » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:39 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #80

Afton wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it shouldn't take Apple/Microsoft/Google/Amazon too much work to put out a comparable product and offer it for free I worked on SkyDrive/OneDrive for a few years. That's what we thought too. This stuff inevitably starts out with "seriously, how long is it going to take to make essentially a wrapper around rsync" and ends up with "Hey, guess what happens when you cross filesystem errors with distributed systems erro…

I am curious, why would you go into the project thinking rsync and not git? It seemed to me most of these syncing folders are really a special case of source code control.

I wasn't involved in these design discussions early on, and Skydrive certainly didn't use rsync, this was just meant as an example of "this is essentially a solved problem, we just need some UI". It isn't, and presenting it as such just gets you into a bad situation.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#104

Post by frik » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

flow99 wrote: post #99

What can I use for free photo gallery storage if I do not want google or dropbox?

Flickr

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#105

Post by mcgannon2007 » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:44 PM UTC

draw_down wrote: post #70

shubhamjain wrote: post #10

One concern about Dropbox I have is its inability to establish itself beyond its File Storage / Syncing software. Salesforce.com, in comparison, has been acquiring companies left and right. Notable acquisitions of Dropbox, like Mailbox, have either shut down, or are nowhere on the impact map. As Dropbox user (albeit a free one), I don't find it useful for anything beyond synced storage (if there is any new addition i…

Maybe just having one good product is okay.

Not at the crazy level they've let their valuation rise to. VCs won't accept that.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#106

Post by microtonal » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:48 PM UTC

Pigo wrote: post #89

shubhamjain wrote: post #10

One concern about Dropbox I have is its inability to establish itself beyond its File Storage / Syncing software. Salesforce.com, in comparison, has been acquiring companies left and right. Notable acquisitions of Dropbox, like Mailbox, have either shut down, or are nowhere on the impact map. As Dropbox user (albeit a free one), I don't find it useful for anything beyond synced storage (if there is any new addition i…

I was a big fan of dropbox until I bought a Chromebook and got T's worth of space in Google Drive for free. I don't think I've used my dropbox in a long time. I don't think I know too many people who use them either.

I was a big fan of dropbox until I bought a Chromebook and got T's worth of space in Google Drive for free.

Just FYI in case you don't know: unless you have a paid GSuite account¹ or an educational GSuite account, Google's privacy policy allows them to mine data in your Google Drive for advertising purposes. Even if you pay for extra storage.

This may or may not be acceptable to you, but for a lot of people it isn't.

1. Former Google Apps for Work.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#107

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

draw_down wrote: post #70

shubhamjain wrote: post #10

One concern about Dropbox I have is its inability to establish itself beyond its File Storage / Syncing software. Salesforce.com, in comparison, has been acquiring companies left and right. Notable acquisitions of Dropbox, like Mailbox, have either shut down, or are nowhere on the impact map. As Dropbox user (albeit a free one), I don't find it useful for anything beyond synced storage (if there is any new addition i…

Maybe just having one good product is okay.

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#108

Post by sova » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

Way to go Dropbox. Just be prepared for when Operating Systems start shipping this functionality built-in. If you can prepare for that inevitable reality (by, say, providing modules or something for specifically that) then it'll all go great. Great werk so far. Started using dropbox in college and I am an extremely satisfied user. Let me just cue up some Fleetwood Mac

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#109

Post by dleslie » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #27

dleslie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rclone serves as a great Linux client for OneDrive. I run it in a cron on my home server and at-will on my laptop.

And that's fine for you and me, but limits its adoption (hence appeal, hence longevity) to people that download unofficial, unsupported third party clients and manually set up cron jobs. The reason Dropbox is kicking ass is that nobody wants to deal with the manual work. Download a program, put stuff in folder, stuff appears elsewhere. No thought required. Simple.

I had to stop using Dropbox because it was unusable on Linux. It leaked memory, hogged CPU cycles, and cranked up IO Wait times.

It was simple and thoughtless, for sure; and that reflected in its decrepit behaviour.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#110

Post by Paul-ish » Thu, Mar 30, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

weston wrote: post #15

Lots of negativity in here, but I'll say I really enjoy how incredibly simple Dropbox is and has remained since it launched. It's so easy to explain how it works to my non-techie parents ("It's just another folder on your computer, except it backs up your data automatically"). I hope Dropbox continues to thrive.

I like the cross platform support. Linux, Mac, Windows, Android, it works on all of my devices. I'd be afraid that platform specific sync options (iCloud, OneDrive, etc...) would neglect their software client on competing platforms.