Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 133 posts

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#11

Post by GeekyBear »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #7
_bxg1 wrote: post #6

When Google Drive and iCloud and One Drive all cropped up, copying the same service with the addition of deeper integration into different devices and software, I was worried Dropbox would be unable to compete. But they've hung in there, and I remain a happy customer.

Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive

I used Dropbox in the early days because of the ability to place a file in your public folder and allow others to download a copy of that file using a standard URL.

You could share a file with your colleagues by simply emailing a URL to the file. No other service was as straightforward at the time.

When that feature was later removed, I stopped using Dropbox.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#12

Post by anoncoward111 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #8
anoncoward111 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive

I've mainly stayed because I don't want to support the mega-corporations when there's a smaller ($12bn counts as "smaller" these days...) company doing a fine job. That aside, I appreciate that they've mostly stayed focused on the core task of syncing files between computers, that there's no bias in terms of devices or OSes, and that their client software tends to work just a little bit better than the competition.

Thank you for your quick and honest reply!

I fancy myself as someone who supports "the little guy", and the Dropbox team's story is an example of how "the big guys" totally and completely fell asleep in a pool of their own money while Dropbox built something that people wanted before other bigger players.

I therefore find it ironic that I don't support them with even just a little bit of money per month, when a big portion of the pitch for the job I currently work and the small project is "but we're different because we're smaller and therefore client focused!"

I hope everyone can reflect on who their money supports. But I'll tell you two large corporations I'm very happy to support: Bozzuto, my apartment company, and Bank of America, my bank.

I would never trust a small landlord to take care of me for the right price (I've been burned so many times by private owners). And well, I store my money in a place that is FDIC and regulated... Ok I have a credit union too :)

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#14

Post by _bxg1 »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #7
_bxg1 wrote: post #6

When Google Drive and iCloud and One Drive all cropped up, copying the same service with the addition of deeper integration into different devices and software, I was worried Dropbox would be unable to compete. But they've hung in there, and I remain a happy customer.

Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive

Google Drive is like "I guess you can use the desktop client instead of the web one". One Drive is like "I guess you can use a Mac". iCloud is like "I guess you can have non-Apple devices". Dropbox just syncs your files from and to anything you have, equally well. I'm pretty sure none of the others even have a Linux client at all, but Dropbox does.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#15

Post by [deleted] »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #7
_bxg1 wrote: post #6

When Google Drive and iCloud and One Drive all cropped up, copying the same service with the addition of deeper integration into different devices and software, I was worried Dropbox would be unable to compete. But they've hung in there, and I remain a happy customer.

Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive

[deleted]

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#17

Post by saagarjha »

sigjuice wrote: post #16

I for one no longer trust Dropbox to behave on my computer after this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338

They now have a kernel extension as part of their app, supposedly to stop people from dragging files out of shared folders.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#18

Post by rpearl »

GeekyBear wrote: post #11
anoncoward111 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive

I used Dropbox in the early days because of the ability to place a file in your public folder and allow others to download a copy of that file using a standard URL. You could share a file with your colleagues by simply emailing a URL to the file. No other service was as straightforward at the time. When that feature was later removed, I stopped using Dropbox.

(Used to work there; haven't in several years.)

Such a feature was a pretty bad phishing and social engineering vector, particularly when you could render html out of that folder, but even when html was dropped that there were social engineering attacks a bad actor could pull relying on the user's trust of a dropbox url. You could also guess other files in the public folder based on the url, which was a privacy concern.

Multiple years before support was dropped, shared links were added, which fix these concerns. You can set ?dl=1 to get a raw link. `curl/wget` (set to follow redirects) still get you the raw contents even if you don't set ?dl=1.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#19

Post by sigjuice »

saagarjha wrote: post #17
sigjuice wrote: post #16

I for one no longer trust Dropbox to behave on my computer after this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338

They now have a kernel extension as part of their app, supposedly to stop people from dragging files out of shared folders.

That’s even worse.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#20

Post by whymauri »

dxhdr wrote: post #4
adpirz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, the fact that dhouston was able to convince a current MIT student and otherwise total stranger to drop out and follow him on this journey in just a few hours' conversation is telling of both his and the product's prowess.

That narrative doesn't quite align with the article stating that "for various reasons none of his friends were able to join the business." In retrospect all of Houston's friends made a huge mistake! Maybe Ferdowsi was tired of MIT and joined him on a lark? I am curious to hear the story from his perspective.

Ferdowsi says joining was like scratching an itch here.[0] I've heard from alumni he spent a lot of time coding in his room, like more than average compared to your friendly neighborhood MIT student; I can imagine the prospect of high-risk, high-reward coding for 18 hours/day was very appealing.

[0] https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/how-two-guys-that-barel...

Post reply on HN