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April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

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

#161

Post by yen223 »

rlu wrote: post #133
toddmorey wrote: post #102

I'm reminded of this Quora post on the popularity of Dropbox: "Dropbox: Why is Dropbox more popular than other programs with similar functionality? Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do: There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync. They built that. Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea. "But," you may ask, "so much…

To be fair, in retrospect everything seems obvious. At the time I'm sure the Dropbox team had to make a bunch of hard decisions. For example, without knowing the success they would later have, it doesn't seem super obvious to have "one master sync folder" as opposed to being able to sync various folders around your computer (a la not-so-successful Live Mesh and perhaps other sync solutions)

So a good question would be, what other "obvious" thing are we not doing? And why aren't we doing them?

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

#162

Post by iskander »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #108
nostrademons wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 "Bu…

That's the thing though, how many "grandmas and grandpas" really need a file sharing service for blobs of data? There already exists "better" solutions to share common file types: flickr/picasa for images, youtube for video, email for word documents, etc. The vast majority of people simply don't need an arbitrary file hosting service. Somehow they've managed to convince people they do. On the other hand, if you give…

My grandfather interviews holocaust survivors and helps make small books of their stories. I set up a dropbox account for him to share transcripts of the interviews, and now he uses it along with the other volunteers. A half dozen retirees, with minimal computer skills, barely able to read English, all happily using dropbox. That really impressed me.

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

#163

Post by ihatehandles »

swalsh wrote: post #119

Read the comments there. Now come back. This is why you don't ask engineers for business advice. I can't tell you how many times I've come up with an idea I think is great, go to work, and talk to my buddies in firmware. The first thing almost all the time out of their mouth is basically "why don't use solution x, in addition to y, which will basically give you the same thing" where x and y are great technologies, bu…

Not to mention we've seen so many "hack-alternative" threads here that our brains do it for us and we down-speak an idea by ourselves.

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

#164

Post by rlu »

MichaelGG wrote: post #132
Osiris wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that encryption would have caused problems with their deduplication code since a single file is deduped across multiple accounts.

Didn't they nix dedupe across accounts, as people realised they could "transfer" files that way, and DropBox didn't want to deal with DMCA issues?

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted for asking a question.

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

#165

Post by simonebrunozzi »

nostrademons wrote: post #31
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…

And I'm an example of how you can be right and still wrong because you let "other plans" get in the way. I'm on that thread with my two cents: "I'm impressed." However, Drew took me out to lunch about 10 months later. They'd just signed their Series A with Sequoia (although it wasn't public knowledge), and were looking to hire their first couple employees. Aston had just been hired the day before as employee #1; Drew…

I like your story, and your humility. I think that Aston is right. At the time, it was the best decision for you, based on what you knew, and wanted to do. Nothing prevents you from inventing something spectacular at Google, now :)

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

#166

Post by vlad »

Thank you for posting this. Having launched my own landing page yesterday (as Drew did in 2007), I thought that I should explain the positive feedback I left for Drew on Hacker News in 2007.

Launch posts were full of naysayers, even back in 2007 when Hacker News was called Startup News. I had done my own startup for 3.5 years at the time, so I wanted to give members of Hacker News useful, insightful, and positive feedback about their project.

The link was a landing page with a video about "throwing away your USB drive."

In my Hacker News comment, I proposed a list of ways to replace "throw away your USB drive" with a non-technical metaphor that people of all ages could understand (a personal secretary who automatically makes duplicates of anything you create for safekeeping, stored the way you want and accessible from anywhere.)

I've observed that newer Dropbox videos started to incorporate my feedback more and more. It's really been awesome to see Drew and the rest of the guys kick butt!

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

#167

Post by Steko »

alecdbrooks wrote: post #125
fit2rule wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a far more insidious fact is that Dropbox fills in a gap left wide open by incompetent OS developers. Its the 21st Century - the OS should be providing such features inherently, without requiring a third party involvement. Maybe HN'ers, at that time, were somehow conscious of this fact, and thus declined to 'see the revolution' that was headed their way. Either way, since there was no other option, Dropbox wa…

Apple has started to do that with iCloud [0] and to a lesser extent, AirDrop [1]. But aside from Apple hardware, iCloud only supports Windows laptops and desktops — no official Linux, Android, or Blackberry support. [0]: https://www.apple.com/icloud/features/ [1]: http://www.macworld.com/article/2048737/get-to-know-ios-7-ai...

Apple even tried to buy Dropbox:

http://www.imore.com/icloud-apple-buy-dropbox-digits

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

#168

Post by fit2rule »

cdcarter wrote: post #144
fit2rule wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm .. because accessing such resources as files in a shared way is a duty of the OS, after all. Or, to put it another way, lets rephrase your question: "Why should OS vendors supply drivers for filesystem _X_?" "Why should OS vendors provide a way for users to share files, at all?" The answer: because it is the duty of the OS to provide such features. Another thing: who says we need a Cloud model in order to deliver…

The thing that helped Dropbox take off (at least in my circles) was that it is on the cloud. I don't have to have a computer somewhere running all the time. In fact, I don't. Almost nobody I chat with regularly does.

Got a smartphone?

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

#169

Post by jiggy2011 »

Perseids wrote: post #156
mkr-hn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't remember what was wrong with Microsoft's solution, but I remember not buying into it. It might be the fact that it's Windows-only. I use Windows exclusively and wouldn't touch SkyDrive because it didn't have clients for other operating systems.

> I use Windows exclusively and wouldn't touch SkyDrive because it didn't have clients for other operating systems. I don't understand your point. If you only use Windows what is holding you back from using SkyDrive? (Except that it is US hosted and you must assume all that data is public, but Dropbox is no different there.)

Because you might want to share files with somebody who isn't using Windows or you might want the ability to switch platforms yourself in the future without worrying about having to migrate all of your stuff.

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

#170

Post by telephonetemp »

unavoidable wrote: post #118
Osiris wrote: post #117

I loved this comment: > 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. Trivially use three different systems to simulate some type of not quite automatic syncing. Why do Linux users ofte…

I suppose you have to come at it from the mindset of those actually using Linux. That is, if it already exists and can be glued together using open tools (as opposed to having to code it yourself), it is "trivial", since it has already been done before.

Intentionally or not, your comment seems to stereotype "those actually using Linux" as unable to appreciate the value of the time and effort saved by a prepackaged solution. While that certainly happens (and is more common in the Linux community than in many others) it is not universal. The popularity of Linux distributions like RHEL and Ubuntu among developers and IT people speaks to that.
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