Even for cloud-based services like dropbox, the cost of doing business in all countries is not the same. There are different laws/regulations to deal with, costs for having foreign-language support people, costs for internationalizing parts of the UI/etc. Personally, I think it's kind of odd to expect that something will cost the exact same amount anywhere in the world. It might be that the added cost for dropbox to…
Products are not priced by cost. They are priced at the highest point the market will tolerate. Moreover, a European employee is generally way cheaper than an American one, the corporate tax is often cheaper, if they were really driven by costs, they would simply have relocated (at least outside of Silicon Valley). The simple fact of operating from California means they don't care about operating costs.
This is a very simplistic view: product pricing also takes into account things like psychological thresholds (e.g. why it's 9.99/month rather than 10) and the likelihood of a competitor entering the space if your profit margins are too high. Amazon is famous for keeping low margins because they're willing to trade the short-term profits in exchange for making it harder for someone else to enter the space which would hurt their profits long term.
> The simple fact of operating from California means they don't care about operating costs.
Again, simplistic analysis: a business like Dropbox doesn't need to scale their employment at the same rate as they add customers so individual costs matter less than, say, a fast-food restaurant because each employee's work benefits as many customers as you can convince to signup. If you're making a profit on someone's labor their salary isn't as significant as, say, the opportunity-cost of not being able to hire someone at all or hiring the wrong person because most of the top people have been lured elsewhere. Being in business means weighing all of those factors not just looking at a single number and trying to lower it.