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Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

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Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#91

Post by ry0ohki »

mattmaroon wrote: post #54

When I was in YC (same batch as Dropbox) this was a constant question. "What happens to Dropbox if Gdrive launches?" I don't actually remember what Drew and Arash thought, but a lot of people speculated on it. It was probably a real threat to them 4.5 years ago. I can't imagine it is now. Dropbox has a large, happy fanbase that's going to keep using it and keep spreading. They're going to keep growing. They've got a…

I'd worry more about Bitcasa, because they are taking the same "ease of use" idea, but making it even easier and cheaper.

Google is not the best with marketing, I haven't heard of any friends using Google Deals instead of Groupon yet either.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#92

Post by marklabedz »

esutton wrote: post #80
marklabedz wrote: post #15

If this means I can combine the seamless syncing and "available anywhere with an internet connection" of Dropbox, with the convenience of being able to make easy edits in Google Docs if I don't have access to MS Word, I'm all for it.

google docs already does this with cloud connect

Unfortunately not when using my MacBook Pro unless I've got Win7 up in a VM.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#93

Post by richardw »

jpdoctor wrote: post #83
markokocic wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how Microsoft won the browser wars few years ago.

You lost me. MS put out a product for free that was competing with other products for free. Are you really saying that is the situation here?

Netscape initially charged for the browser.

"Netscape Navigator was not free to the general public until January 1998"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#94

Post by ztravis »

jpdoctor wrote: post #83
markokocic wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how Microsoft won the browser wars few years ago.

You lost me. MS put out a product for free that was competing with other products for free. Are you really saying that is the situation here?

No, I think he's saying that MS put out a browser bundled with every windows computer sold, so that was what dominated. Now google can do something similar in leveraging its existing userbase (everyone with a google account) to drive adoption of gdrive (ala google+). You won't have to sign up for something new... it'll already be waiting for you.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#95

Post by kooshball »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #35
esutton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the dropbox forums company representatives constantly comment that lower price plans are not feasible. That said, I've always been disappointed by companies that make you buy buckets of units (like postpaid cellphone plans) that they know you will never use rather than offering a per unit price. If the cost to provide 1gb of storage per month is higher than 10/50, than charge the higher price, don't hide it by shi…

I do believe them that lower prices are not feasible while they are reselling Amazon S3... this GDrive rumor might be the push Dropbox needs to bite the bullet and buy their own servers.

They definitely need to buy their own servers at some point in the future. I do remember storage is their main cost. With the big round they just closed, I can't imagine there's not a few engineers working on that already.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#96

Post by patio11 »

webignition wrote: post #86
patio11 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised how difficult "giving it away" can be, even for Google. Google succeeded big on giving away email, search, and androids. Do I need to list up all the acquisitions and products that even with a mortal lock on navigation on the Internet Google couldn't convince people was worth at least $0?

That would actually be a very interesting list. Hard to complete exhaustively, but a few relevant examples would be great!

Google Video (rescued by throwing a few billion at the competitor who was running away with the space), Lively (its like IMVU except without the users), Dodgeball, Wave, Google Page Creator (its like Weebly except without the users), Orkut (debatable whether one can put it in the failure column for not being FB but it certainly isn't FB), etc, etc.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#97

Post by libria »

This is unexpected given their position on it before [1]:

Google was about to launch a project it had been developing for more than a year, a free cloud-based storage service called GDrive. But Sundar had concluded that it was an artifact of the style of computing that Google was about to usher out the door. He went to Bradley Horowitz, the executive in charge of the project, and said, “I don’t think we need GDrive anymore.” Horowitz asked why not. “Files are so 1990,” said Pichai. “I don’t think we need files anymore.” ... “You just want to get information into the cloud. When people use our Google Docs, there are no more files. You just start editing in the cloud, and there’s never a file.”

Are they admitting they were too ambitious? This seems to weaken the case for the mostly file-less ChromeOS and competes with their Google Storage offering.

[1] http://allthingsd.com/20110425/how-google-killed-gdrive-and-...

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#98

Post by crag »

I (we) use Google Apps. I'm assuming this would be another service. If we ever see it. Right now, it's vaporware.

It took me months to "train" everyone in the office on how to use Dropbox. -Ok stop laughing. I'm dealing with doctors here. :) I know doctors who can perform open heart surgery but can't use iTunes.

Anyway I'd rather not go through that training nightmare again. Google is gonna have to do something really impressive.

Re: Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

#100

Post by Murkin » 

  Google X: Is the Y party Over?
I think I seen this on HN about 4 times in the last year.

Is there any front where google managed to beat a good established product (except Android) ?

Only good thing to come out of this, is a hopeful price reduction on Dropbox..

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