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April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

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Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#41

Post by hackinthebochs »

ErsatzVerkehr wrote: post #37
fit2rule wrote: post #35

I'm still not using Dropbox. I absolutely detest the idea that I'm relying on a 3rd party for a feature that I consider should be built into every modern Operating System. At the point when OS vendors relinquished to the Web 2.0 Cult their responsibilities for such features as easy filesharing, the world lost something. Absolutely, its great that people can share files this way. But absolutely, its terrible that it r…

Why should OS vendors also supply cloud storage? Who would provide this cloud storage for Linux distributions?

I think the point is that your computer connected to the internet is your cloud storage. There's no reason why that functionality needs to be farmed off to a third party.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#42

Post by nostrademons »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #39

Honestly, I still think the idea of dropbox is ludicrous. There are many ways to share files, and sending them to a third party to host for you is the worst one of them all. Aside from the few people that really need to multiply their bandwith by many orders of magnitude, a simple file sharing server on their own PC or a server they own would do the job just fine. Besides, dropbox was just yet another iteration of on…

"a simple file sharing server on their own PC or a server they own..."

I think that's the part you're missing. What fraction of the general population can set up a file-sharing server? What fraction of the population even owns a server? What fraction of the population even knows what a server is?

DropBox faced this objection over and over again from the investors they pitched, and Drew's answer was variations on "But how many of them have made it easy enough for your grandma to use?" That was the killer innovation - making filesharing so easy to use that you didn't need to set up anything, just install DropBox and drag your files to a folder. And that's been the killer innovation for many startups - Apple, Google, Amazon, Intuit, etc. all let you do things that many other companies have let you do before, but they made it so easy that even the average Joe can do it.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#43

Post by kartikkumar »

SwellJoe wrote: post #7

I was among the naysayers. I first met Drew at pg's house just before Dropbox did YC. I listened as he explained Dropbox, and I immediately thought of a dozen reasons why it would be very difficult and probably fail (I'd recently worked on something very similar for a month or so just to figure out whether it was a direction I wanted to go with my own company, so had some familiarity with the scale of the problem...I…

Great blog post!

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#44

Post by vectorjohn »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #39

Honestly, I still think the idea of dropbox is ludicrous. There are many ways to share files, and sending them to a third party to host for you is the worst one of them all. Aside from the few people that really need to multiply their bandwith by many orders of magnitude, a simple file sharing server on their own PC or a server they own would do the job just fine. Besides, dropbox was just yet another iteration of on…

You say a bunch of stuff about how it's the same old same old, and ma and pa can set up a file sharing server and figure out syncing between all the computers they use.

The comments on TFA and yours all miss the point. You touch on it in parentheses at the end. It's easy. Normal people don't have an always on server they can administer and have reliably available. It is literally sign up, install tiny program, put files in a folder. Done. This isn't a problem people didn't have, it was a very real and common problem, hence the success.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#45

Post by kartikkumar »

frabcus wrote: post #34
kartikkumar wrote: post #23

I wonder how many people that initially thought/said that they wouldn't need/want/use Dropbox are actually using it now. Would be particularly interesting to know what reasons convinced people who didn't believe it would work to end up using it themselves. Particularly, would be cool to know if it was due to lack of understanding of the product, lack of a clear enough pitch, or something else that established the wro…

When first shown it by a friend, I didn't want to use it because I was ideologically only using open source stuff, and servers I have control over. I carried on using Unison and some dodgy shell scripts. Some years later, I got a free 60Gb Dropbox account with a new Samsung phone. It seemed a good way to sync my music and photos, and to let me access text files on the phone. I'd meanwhile got fed up with my hand made…

And therein lies a fascinating fact about Dropbox. Drew made the tradeoff between convenience and security/ownership one that convenience won out, particularly for a lot of people that from the outset were not expecting it. I think Dropbox's adoption in the smartphone world has been one of the most ingenious partnerships. I had pretty much the same experience in that I really only started looking at Dropbox as a serious solution to me when my Samsung phone shipped with a free account (+ I got a whole lotta free space through my university finishing high in the space race).

I'm not a daily linux user myself, so what particularly interests me is what Dropbox's adoption rate is like in the linux world. This seems to me to be the toughest nut to crack, since most linux users are power users in the sense that they're savvy enough to setup their own Unison/rsync etc. system.

My conclusion after thinking about Dropbox more is that it's a testament to the fact that to the majority of people convenience wins out over most other things (so long as the execution is bang on).

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#46

Post by dnautics »

Cyph0n wrote: post #29
dnautics wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it may not be of much comfort to you, but sometimes naysayers are important. Even if they are wrong about the overall trajectory, they may in the process of naysaying point out specific weaknesses that the visionaries might have missed, and, thus, ultimately allow for the success of the product.

Excellent point. Criticism is in many cases important.

even emotional-rage induced, totally irrational criticism can sometimes uncover rough spots in need of patching!

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#47

Post by [deleted] »

e12e wrote: post #38

Maybe the most remarkable thing is how short the comment thread is -- but I suspect that is more an artefact of how much smaller the hn community was back then, than anything else. Interesting how dropbox managed to succeed in an area with so many competitors. Finally, I still think it's complete crap for me . But I also see how it's a great packaging and reselling of s3 -- and I'm certainly not surprised it took of…

[deleted]

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#49

Post by sskates »

dnautics wrote: post #8
SwellJoe wrote: post #7

I was among the naysayers. I first met Drew at pg's house just before Dropbox did YC. I listened as he explained Dropbox, and I immediately thought of a dozen reasons why it would be very difficult and probably fail (I'd recently worked on something very similar for a month or so just to figure out whether it was a direction I wanted to go with my own company, so had some familiarity with the scale of the problem...I…

it may not be of much comfort to you, but sometimes naysayers are important. Even if they are wrong about the overall trajectory, they may in the process of naysaying point out specific weaknesses that the visionaries might have missed, and, thus, ultimately allow for the success of the product.

Careful! A lot of would be Drew Houston's end up discouraged by naysayers. As a founder, it took me a while to know who to listen to. One of the toughest things about doing a startup is people telling you you're wrong all the time. One of the things YC (and pg in particular) gets right is that they're very encouraging of potential for success.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#50

Post by vectorjohn »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #41
ErsatzVerkehr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should OS vendors also supply cloud storage? Who would provide this cloud storage for Linux distributions?

I think the point is that your computer connected to the internet is your cloud storage. There's no reason why that functionality needs to be farmed off to a third party.

A cloud requires at least 2 computers to be online at the same time. This is not the common case for people.
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