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Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs

techcrunch.com

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Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs

#23

Post by chugger »

jroseattle wrote: post #19

I love Dropbox, but Jobs is right -- they are a feature, not a product. They will be relevant up to the point where operating systems simply makes their functionality a native element of their file system. At least Drew is wise to the fact that they could become an also-ran, so it's not like this will happen to them overnight.

Wait for competition from Google, Facebook or Microsoft.

Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs

#26

Post by jseliger »

wladimir wrote: post #9
brown9-2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an interesting point in "In The Plex" where, IIRC, some executive at Google decides to shoot down GDrive because they (Google) wants to push for a reality where you don't even need to keep files on a device in the first place - the files would just always be in the cloud, and then who needs a copy on whatever device you happen to be using? If true, this seems like a real wasted opportunity - even if that is…

I still remember that as well. They wanted to get rid of the whole "file" concept, as in a single isolated opaque blob of data. They thought it is an outdated concept in today's interconnected age. Although there is some truth in that, personally I don't think locking data in cloud-based silos is any better than locking it locally in proprietary data formats. If anything, it is a further step backward. For example: D…

Can you import/export it losslessly? I don't think so.

Apparently not: my students occasionally use Google Docs to get papers from their computers to printers in the library (or vice-versa), and the formatting of their papers constantly gets fucked up. When I see weirdly formatted papers, the students almost always blame Google Docs. Granted, I don't know if that's because the students don't know what they're doing or if Google Docs is hard or confusing to use, but still.

Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs

#29

Post by brlewis »

jroseattle wrote: post #19

I love Dropbox, but Jobs is right -- they are a feature, not a product. They will be relevant up to the point where operating systems simply makes their functionality a native element of their file system. At least Drew is wise to the fact that they could become an also-ran, so it's not like this will happen to them overnight.

Operating systems we run Dropbox on at my house: Ubuntu, OSX, iOS, Windows, Blackberry 5.

Someday they may all have Dropbox-like functionality built in, and someday after that they may interoperate. Dropbox can stay in their current business a long time regardless.

Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs

#30

Post by uptown »

startupcto wrote: post #14

I think the fundamental differences between Dropbox and iCloud is the sharing feature and Windows/Linux/Mac/etc support. iCloud is never going to be on Windows and our company uses Dropbox to share project resources and our machines are a mixed of PCs and Macs so iCloud means nothing for us.

"iCloud is never going to be on Windows"

The same was said about iTunes, but it eventually appeared there. It wouldn't surprise me if more aspects of iCloud eventually appear on Windows.

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