Dropbox CTO Resigns • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#81

Post by dheera » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 12:15 AM UTC

jchw wrote: post #64

bambax wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but a feature that works is worth more than a product that doesn't. Dropbox always works, everywhere. I'm old enough to remember a world pre-Drobox (and pre-high bandwidth). I used to work at different places. I kept a laptop in each office, and carried with me Iomega disks that I synced every morning. It was slow and complex and error-prone. Alternatives from either Apple or MS will never work as well, they w…

“Dropbox always works, everywhere.” This used to be true, but has gradually become less true. Linux support has certainly taken quite a dive. They also removed features I really liked. I used the Public folder a lot :( (I actually used to pay for Dropbox, because I genuinely thought it was a great product. It’s still probably one of the best syncing services, but at this point I’ve just moved off of syncing services.…

Yes, this. Them ending support for ecryptfs filesystems (they used to support it) is the main reason I'm considering ending my subscription soon. They took a massive step backward there and I am not happy about having to move my entire Dropbox directory to an unencrypted part of the filesystem.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#82

Post by bitL » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 12:16 AM UTC

manicdee wrote: post #67

bitL wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox uses very sophisticated binary diff nobody else provides to minimize inbound/outbound traffic; this has some CPU/battery cost though. Competitors usually provide very dumb upload/download that might be less CPU/battery intense but much heavier on the bytes transferred. You simply might not be their target group.

Those who do not study ~~history~~ ~~Unix~~ rsync are doomed to repeat it poorly.

I used rsync to mirror one encrypted 14TB drive to another one. It took ~2 weeks. I wouldn't call rsync "good enough".

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#83

Post by hnick » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 12:39 AM UTC

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #18

Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…

My wife uses Gmail for her side business and it's nearly full (15GB for free is the current standard apparently). If she ends up paying for that service it might just be the thing that makes us drop Dropbox. Google drive is good enough for her needs (we don't really sync anyway, just upload and share).

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#84

Post by asdff » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 12:44 AM UTC

lacker wrote: post #34

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #18

Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…

Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. Over that same time period, they have gone from being a consumer product to an enterprise product, because the money in file sharing software is in enterprise. Slowness, battery use, complexity, none of these are as important to Dropbox nowadays as they used to be, because they are not as important for en…

Swimming with the big fish is flawed from the start. Why do businesses use one drive? Because they have enterprise office and outlook for their email, and one drive was thrown in. Why do businesses use google drive? They use the google suite and gmail for their email and google drive was thrown in.

If dropbox wants to compete with enterprise software they'd need to reinvent the office/g suite AND email services. They tried the former with dropbox paper, but it's clear that they've bitten off far more than they can ever chew, especially when your direct competition is google and microsoft.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#85

Post by manicdee » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 12:45 AM UTC

bitL wrote: post #82

manicdee wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those who do not study ~~history~~ ~~Unix~~ rsync are doomed to repeat it poorly.

I used rsync to mirror one encrypted 14TB drive to another one. It took ~2 weeks. I wouldn't call rsync "good enough".

What was the bottleneck?

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#86

Post by mixmastamyk » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 12:56 AM UTC

r-bryan wrote: post #59

notyourday wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: That's what happens when the "Enterprise sales" mosquito bites a B2C company.

Sounds like a perfectly classic version of the growth trajectory characterized in "Innovator's Dilemma" (Clayton Christensen). Company grows into a big fat dinosaur, leaving a soft underbelly for a scrappy little mammal to claw at. Except in this case the scrappy little mammals are big fat dinosaurs themselves.

It’s a continuous process.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#87

Post by toxik » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:06 AM UTC

NoPicklez wrote: post #72

toxik wrote: post #10

Famously, Steve Jobs once called Dropbox “a feature, not a product.”

Steve also said "There’s no better mobile computing tool than your finger"... Now they're rolling out mouse support on the iPad.

I’m sure Jobs also commented on the merits of juicing, what does that have to do with Dropbox?

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#88

Post by radarthreat » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

toxik wrote: post #87

NoPicklez wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve also said "There’s no better mobile computing tool than your finger"... Now they're rolling out mouse support on the iPad.

I’m sure Jobs also commented on the merits of juicing, what does that have to do with Dropbox?

Damn!

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#89

Post by encoderer » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:35 AM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #51

ram_rar wrote: post #45

Dropbox has a tough road ahead. With Google Drive, Microsoft Word cloud suite and Box, its definitely getting tough to survive by just doing B2C. With their recent acquisitions they'll probably pivot to DocuSign like model. But they are definitely losing their niche.

B2C is the place to be - it is a niche where an excellent product is going to continue to earn excellent money. Continue to reiterate and continue to improve the product, dont overspend on infrastructure and dont rent super expensive office space in the most expensive cities in the world. Enterprise is where SaaS companies go to die because they think that Microsofts of the world are just going to let them have the m…

I struggle to connect this to market facts. What big consumer SaaS tools exist? You could argue that Spotify and Netflix count. I disagree, but fine. You have networks like Tinder. You have a few tools companies like Carbonite, Dropbox, 1Password. These are niche.

In the enterprise... Slack, Twilio, Stripe, Okta, Qualtrics, Datadog, Zoom, I feel like I could name 10 more easily.

Enterprise is where SaaS companies get paid. Slack makes like half their revenue from 500 companies.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#90

Post by jake_morrison » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 1:38 AM UTC

The most interesting use case for Dropbox is enabling cross-app workflows on iPad. Most apps support the Dropbox APIs now. Apple needs to get its shit together and make iCloud the back end. They can mandate that apps support their APIs, and then iCloud gets more revenue.