Dropbox acquires Hackpad (YC W12)

Post by dkroy » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 3:04 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #110

dkroy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all could be accomplished with their api and your own web-server. The coding would be the hardest part though from an effort standpoint.

I actually think DB should be the webserver in this case. Why can't I just make a "web-server" folder in my dropbox, drop a bunch of html, js and css and a few image files in there, get a URL and voila, instant website? You sorta can already in truth, but they don't like it and the bandwidth is pretty severely capped on these kinds of sites. Make it part of the paid account (with x-fer up to 1GB/mo or whatever) and h…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 3:27 AM UTC

jkelsey wrote: post #49

api wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So was a trillion dollars in fraud. "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said."

Most people here who don't have good opinion of Condoleezza Rice (myself included) because of the significant parts she played during the Bush Administration probably agree with the points you're making. However, gender has nothing to do with it. Building your criticisms on top of misogyny throws your entire motivations into question. The foundation has already rotted out and the rest of your arguments fell through;…

Post by prostoalex » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 3:36 AM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #127

orik wrote: post #3

Hackpad and Loom? Dropbox is on a bit of a feeding frenzy.

They are prepping for an IPO. (note - for anyone not familiar, a common strategy just before an IPO is to cash out on a large chunk of capital so as to sweeten the deal for the much larger public capital raise)

Post by nrao123 » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 6:47 AM UTC

omarhegazy wrote: post #126

UVB-76 wrote: post #32

This is how it was always going to go. Dropbox's core business is unsustainable, and they can't compete long-term with rivals like Google and Apple. They're flailing in all directions at the moment; pushing for the enterprise/government market with the appointment of Condoleezza Rice, now burning a load of money acquiring businesses offering tangential services, in the hope they can diversify their business model. It…

How is Dropbox's core business unsustainable? The way I see it, Dropbox wants to be the filesystem and personal hard drive of the Internet. Easy enough business, just sell hard drive space. And as always with any software business, with users, you have data, and with data, you have potential advertiser money and a lot of investor interest. Why can't they rival Google/Apple? Yes, bigger companies have a lot more resou…

Post by grrowl » Fri, Apr 18, 2014, 7:32 AM UTC

thruflo wrote: post #101

bane wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get why DB hasn't come up with a business model to let people just self-host content out of their accounts. They basically offer an instant web-server experience for non-tech folks, but they cap bandwidth for downloads. - How awesome would it be if I could dump a bunch of mp3 files and an html page or index file or something, get a URL from the service and suddenly my band has a website. Then if I go to…

Their other acquisition today - Loom - is on the annihilate Flickr path. I must say I do like your auto monetization angle though. If carousel is anything to go by, their 'we build UX ontop of your content' execution is so far a bit meh. Trouble is, as Twitter showed, there's no long term joy in building a competitor to a service using its API.