281–290 of 413 posts
Theory: They're dumping to lower the valuation of Dropbox for a possible later acquisition. "Well, you could sell to us, or we could put you out of business."
I know there have been stranger acquisitions by Google, but I just can't think of any benefit to Google if they were to purchase Dropbox.
Implicit expectation of any storage service is, data will remain private and when we remove data from there, it won't exist anywhere on Google systems in any form. Unfortunately, Google terms and conditions says, http://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/ "When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify…
How could they possibly operate a service that has as one of its primary features sharing and copying of your content, if you didn't give them a license to do that? This is standard boilerplate for just about any service that accepts user generated content for just about any reason.
Google must to invest more in improving the Web and native Google Drive clients if they want to beat Dropbox. Pricing is just a cheap & temporary trick.
My thought process on pricing like this inevitably follows the same pattern. First, 1 TB for $9.99? Cool! Then, 10 TB for $99.99? Why are you trying to jack me for 9 cents? I know it's nothing in the long run, but part of me really wishes I had a reason to need 10 TB so I could try to ask for 10 separate 1 TB plans with the space added together, just to force them to face this silliness head on.
I can't put my finger on why. But that is how I feel.
I think at this point I'm a little more comfortable paying more for a company that I know won't abandon this market. I know Dropbox will be Dropbox in 5 years. How can we be sure Google Drive won't be shuttered in less time? Google is very haphazard with their web properties. Sometimes they shutter them, sometimes they stuff them in the closet. Google Reader, Wave, etc, you know. the stories. What scares me more are…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd probably bet on Google putting Dropbox out of business with competition, then getting rid of Drive because it's no longer a growth area.
How very Kafka.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know Dropbox will be Dropbox in 5 years. As a counterpoint to that, Dropbox might not exist in 5 years. Google most likely will. Basically, there is no answer here that guarantees the future of your cloud storage. It's useful to access your files from multiple locations, but using it for long term file archival seems like asking for disappointment (as well as being a neat way of throwing money into the sky).
Google has a history of shutting even profitable projects. Dropbox doesn't. There is a legitimate reason to be wary of relying on anything Google.
Just to be absolutely clear... you'll have 2 years to drag and drop a folder to another location.