131–140 of 221 posts
my dropbox account was deleted without warning or notice, so i guess im ready for something new
repro steps: 1) have a dropbox account 2) join a company that uses dropbox teams 3) leave that company 4) poof, account disappears
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This argument seems silly. Early innovation does not mean an end to competition, or an eternal lock on a product type. Google's search engine would have never come into existence if their founders followed this line of thinking.
Read carefully. I'm not saying Dropbox should have a monopoly, but that the competition should be more evenly matched.
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FWIW, one of the reasons I like having a non Google service to hold some important files is in case I hit the Google black swan and get locked out of my gmail account. (I also backup my email regularly.) While integration would probably be convenient, I need to be able to keep working if I do get locked out.
> is in case I hit the Google black swan and get locked out of my gmail account. Do you think fear of a Google black swan is enough of a selling point for dropbox to survive?
Here is the fundamental problem of competing against Google as a SW company. Google is an advertising company, as everyone now well knows. They have no problem selling SW cheap, or giving it away for free, if they can help their advertising business (either directly by hosting ads in the service, or mining data from the service for info to help target ads). If you feel like your SW has actual value and charge for it,…
Let's substitute the names of Netscape and Microsoft circa 1997 and see how this plays out.
I can't wait to hear all the reasons why the Google/Dropbox comparative scenario is so much different.
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Agreed. File sharing is the type of thing where you can't just rely on first-mover-advantage. Google has the ability and infrastructure to offer more space for free on more devices and platforms.
File sharing is the type of thing where you can't just rely on first-mover-advantage. Yes, especially in a market where there are many, many users of computers who might have occasion to share files who have not used (or even heard of) any of the available file-sharing solutions yet. I am a sporadic user of Dropbox strictly for back-up of documents I produce, and a moderately frequent user of Google Docs for collabor…
Then I started using it for sharing. Man, it's magic - I've never had it be so painless to share things. I can put a folder in my dropbox, share it to a few emails, and then everyone just has it later in the day. Man, that's cool. I can also create unlimited of those folders easily to control who gets what documents/files. It's a bloody miracle, Dropbox is. The backup feature is really second fiddle to sharing, it's just to make it useful enough for you to try it before you need to share, so that you discover sharing and fall in love with the product.
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..
Are you serious? Try WEB SEARCH.
Actually; Web Search Web Advertising Web Based Email Online Mapping
They're not exactly failing in the Browser market either.
If you stop thinking in terms of Buzz and Wave etc, Google, when entering an arena with an existing proven market to attack, have a record of becoming the big dog in the yard quite handily.
They seem greedy to me. They seem to want to be able to retire and not have to work anymore if they wanted after the dropbox startup.
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> If I were Dropbox I'd simply view this as market validation And if I were Dropbox, I'd worry like hell. Google isn't depending on making GDrive profitable from fees, so they can literally give it away.
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?
You can add Google Navigation and Google Voice to the list of successful products that match that description.