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Dropbox is in your Office

blog.dropbox.com

51–60 of 211 posts

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#51
post #42

For me, the fact that Microsoft worked directly with the FBI to integrate OneDrive into PRISM makes the whole product something I would never touch, so it's great to see alternatives picking up the slack. http://cryptome.org/2014/11/ms-onedrive-nsa-prism.htm

Dropbox also has to hand your data over upon receiving a court order. The only difference is Microsoft is less likely to bungle the request.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#52
post #42

For me, the fact that Microsoft worked directly with the FBI to integrate OneDrive into PRISM makes the whole product something I would never touch, so it's great to see alternatives picking up the slack. http://cryptome.org/2014/11/ms-onedrive-nsa-prism.htm

well maybe Dropbox isn't so much better

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/dropbox-rice-controversy/

http://www.drop-dropbox.com/

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#53

So, how long until Microsoft buys Dropbox? Seems kind of strange that they would not be integrating OneDrive into Office rather than Dropbox.

My hope is that will never happend. It's just hope. Since FoxPro many years ago, there is not a single acquisition by Microsoft that turned in a great product or an improvement to the end user (please, include in this scope Groove Networks, whichi was great at that time).

> Since FoxPro many years ago, there is not a single acquisition by Microsoft that turned in a great product or an improvement to the end user

Plenty of FoxPro stuff ended up in SQL Server. Client cursor engine is the first thing that comes to mind (RDO, too, IIRC). The product itself was allowed to languish, but the good parts went into other things.

But for the most part I'd say you're spot on. I can't think of anything else that ultimately went on better things under Microsoft's flag, or benefited other products with the acquired product's technology.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#54
"Dropbox is home to over 35 billion Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations."

So they're reading the files in Dropbox and its contents to know they're Office documents?

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#55
post #24
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they feel bad? They probably want to have a successful product not because the user has no option but for its own merits.

Try that line on Bill Gates in his prime.

Things are different around here. Teams are expected to deliver great products on their own, not rely on some artificial lock-in to force adoption. You see this all over - we offer Linux on Azure, you can federate AD with Google Apps, we release dozens of apps for iOS and Android, and we are opening up many many APIs for rich integration. (Opinion my own obviously).

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#56
post #42

For me, the fact that Microsoft worked directly with the FBI to integrate OneDrive into PRISM makes the whole product something I would never touch, so it's great to see alternatives picking up the slack. http://cryptome.org/2014/11/ms-onedrive-nsa-prism.htm

All the major cloud vendors are surveillance collaborators.

... and I have to ask: do they have any choice? Can you say no to the national security state? If I were in charge of a company with employees who have families and fiscal responsibilities, I can't say that I could. I'm sure any request from those quarters comes with an implied "we wouldn't want anything bad to happen to your company, now would we?"

The only way I can imagine a company saying no is if it were privately held and the largest investors were on board, and most of these companies are public. Being public makes you subject to all kinds of "soft power."

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#58
post #54

"Dropbox is home to over 35 billion Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations." So they're reading the files in Dropbox and its contents to know they're Office documents?

Did you think they were not?

How do you think they generate thumbnails and such?.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#60

So, how long until Microsoft buys Dropbox? Seems kind of strange that they would not be integrating OneDrive into Office rather than Dropbox.

OneDrive is already integrated into Office. Microsoft is just ensuring that Office is a platform that everyone uses even if they don't use other Microsoft services.
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