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Dropbox is in your Office

blog.dropbox.com

81–90 of 211 posts

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#81

Yet another (succesful) attempt of Office to stay integrated into every household. I wish the entire Office suite would kust die over night but sadly it is too settled. There is no competition either or severely crippled.

Well, there's Open Office, Libre Office (both free) and Scrivener (paid), and tons of high end professional typesetting software - I'd say there's plenty of competition, but Office is winning because so far it's still the most accessible and useful for most people. It may be that it's the best of a bad lot, but I still choose it over LibreOffice etc.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#82
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drew didn't sell to Steve Jobs, why would he sell to Microsoft?

It's possible that it is becoming a more difficult space to compete in. There are now several companies (MS, Google) that can use it as a mechanism for lock-in or subsidize the costs in another way. If Dropbox wants to compete, their margins over AWS pricing will get very thin, and Google et al can still undercut them.

Correct! Actually what's coming is free or unlimited storage from MS and Google as Levie has pointed out awhile ago.

When that happens the only way Box or Dropbox makes money is from businesses because MS and Google will want you in their eco-system.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#84

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.

It's also a way to push their OneDrive team to make a better product in true Gates competitive spirit.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#85
post #76

I stopped using Dropbox after the whole Condoleezza Rice thing and have been using a mix of Google Drive and OneDrive and I must say I like them a lot better. They do the same (and more if you use other Google Apps) and prices are cheaper. Are there any benefits to using Dropbox? Are there any other real alternatives you could recommend to give them a try?.

Does google drive have syncing folders on all systems like dropbox where I can just drag and drop? windows, mac, linux, android, ios? I actually don't know, not being sarcastic or anything.

They do. I think this is a fair question because it's not very well popularized. But it works great.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#87
post #78

I stopped using Dropbox after the whole Condoleezza Rice thing and have been using a mix of Google Drive and OneDrive and I must say I like them a lot better. They do the same (and more if you use other Google Apps) and prices are cheaper. Are there any benefits to using Dropbox? Are there any other real alternatives you could recommend to give them a try?.

Last time I looked at the Google Drive terms of service -- which was admittedly years ago (I ought to check again) -- they were basically unacceptable for me because Google were demanding a perpetual non-exclusive copyright license to everything I stored there which would have allowed for unlimited reproduction or use for any purpose Google felt like making of it. It looked like your standard boilerplate land-grab, a…

This comment made me curious. When I went to check the actual terms of service, I found this line:

"Some of our Services allow you to upload, submit, store, send or receive content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours."

which is suddenly followed up by:

"When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps)."

So while you own your intellectual property, Google does take a copy of all rights pertinent to the work. It's hard for me to say why Google would do this; alienating what I'd imagine to be a significant userbase of content generators.

Source: http://www.google.com/policies/terms/

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#88

I stopped using Dropbox after the whole Condoleezza Rice thing and have been using a mix of Google Drive and OneDrive and I must say I like them a lot better. They do the same (and more if you use other Google Apps) and prices are cheaper. Are there any benefits to using Dropbox? Are there any other real alternatives you could recommend to give them a try?.

I never tried these guys as their pricing seemed too good to be true.

https://hubic.com/

Maybe someone can comment if they've used them in anger.

Re: Dropbox is in your Office

#89

I stopped using Dropbox after the whole Condoleezza Rice thing and have been using a mix of Google Drive and OneDrive and I must say I like them a lot better. They do the same (and more if you use other Google Apps) and prices are cheaper. Are there any benefits to using Dropbox? Are there any other real alternatives you could recommend to give them a try?.

I never tried these guys as their pricing seemed too good to be true. https://hubic.com/ Maybe someone can comment if they've used them in anger.

They are run by what is arguably the largest hosting provider[1]. It's definitely going to "work" mind you, but outside of EU the speeds may be a tad abysmal.

It's standard OpenStack storage and it's possible to mount FUSE drive, so no terrible client. I use it and have no complaints, just don't expect 1 ms read times as a mounted drive, etc.

[1] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/14/whos-... (ctrl+f ovh)

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