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Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

reuters.com

11–20 of 80 posts

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#11
The problem I see is dropbox as a service becoming a commodity as competition in the sector ramps up. Apple is making a big push on cloud with airdrop and icloud, Tencent is offering 10tb storage.

It's heating up and it's gonna be hard to maintain a viable USP.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#12
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The only problem is that you have to install something."

Eh. I don't use Dropbox, in part because of exactly that. I passed over Spotify for the same reason. Given feature parity, I will choose a browser-based solution over one that requires me to install some random binary blob every time.

Spotify has since come out with a web player [1] if you are still interested.

[1] https://play.spotify.com/

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#13
Seems a bit like setting an anchor for a buyout. I have a feeling a 4 billion offer by Google/MS/Amazon would be accepted very quickly even if it was very little cash/all stock.

Maybe my sense is very wrong but it seems like a decent time to get bought out timing wise.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#14
post #10
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The only problem is that you have to install something."

Eh. I don't use Dropbox, in part because of exactly that. I passed over Spotify for the same reason. Given feature parity, I will choose a browser-based solution over one that requires me to install some random binary blob every time.

Mapping your SkyDrive as a network drive in Windows 7+, should fairly work for linux distros if they support webDAV

http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57347395-285/how-to-map-...

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#15
post #11

The problem I see is dropbox as a service becoming a commodity as competition in the sector ramps up. Apple is making a big push on cloud with airdrop and icloud, Tencent is offering 10tb storage. It's heating up and it's gonna be hard to maintain a viable USP.

I don't think this is true at all. There are huge network effects because of folder sharing. I've gotten at least a dozen people to sign up for Dropbox over the years this way. It was tough at first, but the adoption rate is sufficiently high now that in a group of 5, there may be only one person who hasn't got an account already. And when they're the odd one out, the peer pressure to sign up is so great that it forces even the latest of late adopters to give in.

Apple is irrelevant because they're not cross platform, and no one will trust their data to a Chinese company, particularly the businesses that actually pay for Dropbox.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#16

"Dropbox tallied $116 million in sales last year, more than doubling its $46 million in revenue in 2011. The year before, it nearly quadrupled sales from $12 million." http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303...

i m flabbergasted at the amount of money there is in this service (and related ones) - is it really that useful? I had a dropbox account since the early days, and i have hardly put any use into it.

What do people actually use it for? Share files? Backup solution?

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#18
post #16

"Dropbox tallied $116 million in sales last year, more than doubling its $46 million in revenue in 2011. The year before, it nearly quadrupled sales from $12 million." http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303...

i m flabbergasted at the amount of money there is in this service (and related ones) - is it really that useful? I had a dropbox account since the early days, and i have hardly put any use into it. What do people actually use it for? Share files? Backup solution?

Most of the less-technical people I know who use it use it as a backup. The free tier can restore deleted files within a certain time period (30 days?). If you put your default file locations (My Documents or similar) inside dropbox, it works pretty well as a set-and-forget backup.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#19
post #13

Seems a bit like setting an anchor for a buyout. I have a feeling a 4 billion offer by Google/MS/Amazon would be accepted very quickly even if it was very little cash/all stock. Maybe my sense is very wrong but it seems like a decent time to get bought out timing wise.

IPO
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