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Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

cnbc.com

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Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#111

Post by DixieDev »

josefresco wrote: post #67

Clients share files with me using Dropbox so I need a Dropbox account. My Dropbox account is now close to full and I have to "manage it". I don't like how files shared with me count against my quota and I don't like having to babysit a service my clients use to share files. I wonder how many business owners "just pay" to make the nag messaging go away.

Not a Dropbox user myself, but this system of counting shared files towards your quota seems pretty awful, and I'm surprised I've not seen more complaints about it. Do other cloud storage providers work this way?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#112

Post by jeffbarr »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #22

Knew the writing was on the wall for this company the moment I had to dig into a drop down chevron to find the download button for a file shared with me on Dropbox. Making it frustrating to collaborate with paying customers of your platform is a sure sign something is rotten.

I thought I was the only one who had trouble with this. Based on the other replies here, that's definitely not the case.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#114

Post by brundolf »

pjc50 wrote: post #96
brundolf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's dismaying that even the best, most shining examples of unicorns that took off on the backs of good products and have stood toe-to-toe with the mega-corps, are now losing value simply because they're competing with the mega-corps , and being forced to look for acquisitions just like all the other startups. If that doesn't plainly show that big tech has gotten too big, I don't know what will.

Historically there has been an argument in economics over whether markets necessarily tend towards consolidation, and I'm inclined to agree with Stiglitz that they do: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/joseph-stiglitz-are-m... Especially in markets with strong network effects. Barring government action, operating systems / platforms will necessarily either directly subsume their most profitable applications, or…

I agree completely. I think history (at least, the past 150 years) has shown this clearly. I've come to see an economy of corporations as a stew that tends to "clump up" and needs to be periodically "stirred" as part of the natural course of its development.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#115

Post by nabla9 »

raiyu wrote: post #9

Dropbox has been hammered by Wall Street ever since it went public. On the surface it should be trading well enough given it's revenue growth from when it went public to now, however, the narrative of competing with both Microsoft and Google was a tough one to play down. Revenue growth will slow down to below 20% in 2021 which basically starts to take DBX out of the high growth tech stock focus and it is trading at l…

More important than revenue growth is the expected margins after the growth slows down.

What Dropbox is selling is something that will be bulk commodity. They will never be able to settle and get good revenue.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#116

Post by m-ee »

nvarsj wrote: post #35
raiyu wrote: post #9

Dropbox has been hammered by Wall Street ever since it went public. On the surface it should be trading well enough given it's revenue growth from when it went public to now, however, the narrative of competing with both Microsoft and Google was a tough one to play down. Revenue growth will slow down to below 20% in 2021 which basically starts to take DBX out of the high growth tech stock focus and it is trading at l…

What do you use as an alternative to Dropbox? I haven't found anything that works as well across multiple platforms. I really hate all the feature bloat in it, which I never use, and weird decisions like dropping non-ext4. But still, for basic file syncing it seems hard to beat.

Box seems to be taking some of the enterprise market share.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#117

Post by tw04 »

brundolf wrote: post #21
raiyu wrote: post #9

Dropbox has been hammered by Wall Street ever since it went public. On the surface it should be trading well enough given it's revenue growth from when it went public to now, however, the narrative of competing with both Microsoft and Google was a tough one to play down. Revenue growth will slow down to below 20% in 2021 which basically starts to take DBX out of the high growth tech stock focus and it is trading at l…

It's dismaying that even the best, most shining examples of unicorns that took off on the backs of good products and have stood toe-to-toe with the mega-corps, are now losing value simply because they're competing with the mega-corps , and being forced to look for acquisitions just like all the other startups. If that doesn't plainly show that big tech has gotten too big, I don't know what will.

I disagree, mega-corps aren't the problem. As Steve Jobs famously said: they're a feature, not a product.

Even if you eliminate Microsoft, Google, AND Amazon from the discussion, the list of alternatives is endless.

Synology and QNAP both have a "free" sync and share client. WD, Seagate, Samsung, Apple, not to mention the open-source options out there. Do the big 3 put MORE pressure on Dropbox, sure. But they never pivoted. Just look at a company like Druva - we used them forever ago as a file sync and share, and now they look very, very different.

Dropbox's problem isn't mega-corps or "big tech getting too big", it's that they didn't or couldn't innovate beyond their core product.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#118

Post by Cthulhu_ »

djhworld wrote: post #91
manigandham wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company is nowhere near failing. It's just not necessary to be as big as it is. Dropbox still has the best sync technology by far, however they failed to really capitalize on a single market. The consumer side cares more about value and it's hard to compete with Microsoft/Apple/Google while the business side is already well-served by Box.com. I still think there's a good opportunity if they can build on storage t…

For me the main reason I'm not a Dropbox customer is their rigid pricing structure, £7.99 a month for 1TB is good value for people who use 1TB, but I only need like 10% of that so would be wasting money I'm guessing they bank on a small % of "whale" consumers using all their allowance and everyone else being way under the limit I've stuck with Google drive for the 100gb plan at £1.99 which suits my needs, but would m…

They're not likely to add smaller packages though, since they KNOW 99% of their customers will never go up that high. It's a bit like gmail; they offered 1 GB at the time (if I recall correctly?) which was a ridiculous amount that in practice, 99% of people would NEVER reach. But it was great PR. Mind you, gmail is "free".

If Dropbox were to offer a 500GB package for half price, 99% of their customers that found out about it would switch to that. What's worse, they would likely open themselves up to a class action suit for people who feel like they overpaid for years.

Introducing a cheaper, lower capacity subscription now would be suicide for the company.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#119

Post by [deleted] »

pjc50 wrote: post #99
prionassembly wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox had a discontinuous price increase a couple of years ago that soured me on them. I'm still a user -- the price is still a couple of notches below marginal utility. But I no longer recommend it. Something similar happened to Evernote -- I stopped liking the brand when I started to feel price-gouged. And then I quit on them shortly after when the apps were not snappy and well-organized to my liking (at the pric…

What is the bandwidth of a peach tin full of index cards, anyway?

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#120

Post by passthejoe »

F00Fbug wrote: post #75
nvarsj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use as an alternative to Dropbox? I haven't found anything that works as well across multiple platforms. I really hate all the feature bloat in it, which I never use, and weird decisions like dropping non-ext4. But still, for basic file syncing it seems hard to beat.

Have a look at Syncthing.

Syncthing is solid. Maybe a little too geeky for most, but for tech-minded people it can really work. I've had little issues here and there, but it definitely solves some problems for me.

I generally use Dropbox for personal files and Syncthing for business. It's a great setup to keep those things separate.

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