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Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

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Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#51
post #46
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still need to work on their pricing. They have an opportunity to convert quite a few of their non-paying customers if they'd simply offer a plan between 2GB and 50GB. https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/90/better-more-affordable-st...

Don't forget, they also have an opportunity to downgrade quite a few of their paying customers from 50GB to e.g. 20GB.

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#53
post #9

More than 4 years ago, a post on HN by Houston asking for a review of DropBox: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 [Edit: Corrected link. Thank you.]

And if I remember correctly that linked to just a video of how dropbox works, without Drew actually having a working product (but you couldn't see that on the video).

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#54
post #4

Dropbox has traction and paying users. Why do they need $200 million? Of course it's not just a two-man gig anymore, but... what is it for? If their business model isn't supporting the growth they want and they're not going to change it, is throwing money around going to be all that helpful? Maybe I'm doubting that they'll be able to bring in that many new users because I can't imagine how anyone hasn't heard of drop…

When there's a massive bubble frothing money all over the place, it probably pays to take advantage of it.

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#55
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty clever on their part :) It is actually pretty standard. Deduplication is a very common method for not duplicating the same content on shared storage.

OT: How do you add italics to text? I find it preferable than adding >s.

You may find these helpful, the formatting options for HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#57

All this talk/speculation about how the valuations are done and Amazon S3 costs etc.. Just log in to Dropbox with email ceo@dropbox.com or partner@yc.com on dropbox.com with ANY password and look in their docs folder, S3costs2011.xls and valuation.xls. duh.....

Let's hope they will invest at least some of their newly-gotten money into improving their security.

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#58
post #33
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About the percentage of unique files: I guess if you go by volume, the percentage of unique files is small. And if you go by number, the percentage of unique files is big. I.e. bigger files are more likely to be stuff that you didn't make yourself.

Until you get to home video. Which is growing very quickly.

Indeed. I wonder whether pre-fabricated files will grow in size, too, or whether the ratio will eventually shift.

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#59
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet that Dropbox is that largest S3 user in existence. Custom rates are very likely.

Netflix also uses Amazon S3 and is probably an even larger customer, but I agree with your assessment that custom rates are very likely (for both of them).

Netflix uses EC2 for computing power. It uses CDNs (Level 3 and Akamai mostly) to deliver streams so most of the bandwidth would not be from Amazon.

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#60
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, interesting. I've never heard of it. EDIT: Apparently it only works on Windows, so I'll be sticking with Dropbox. EDIT: Thanks, I had missed the Mac option. But to me, they cheapen their Live Mesh brand by association with Windows Live ID and Hotmail.

Windows Live is the online brand, all their free-download software/online services are "Windows Live X". I'm not sure how it cheapens it any more than if it was "Microsoft X" or "iProduct"...

Okay, I should rephrase: when I see Hotmail so prominently featured on the Windows Live ID page, I worry because of Hotmail's spammy past.

Also, the only times I've encountered Windows Live ID are times when it was being forced on me. E.g., when I got my broadband, I was forced to use a Windows-only CD to install a lot of (to me: irrelevant, useless, copycat) consumer software (photo sharing etc.), then get a Windows Live ID, and then finally activate the broadband.

So I pulled a Windows machine from a dumpster, did the install, got the Live ID, activated the broadband and then installed Linux. It felt dirty (and not from the dumpster).

After activation, the Live ID was not required, nor the software, nor Windows. So the whole experience was dictated and had no value for me, the customer.

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