Dropbox Versus The World • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#21

Post by shanemhansen » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 1:03 AM UTC

arikrak wrote: post #7

I only started the article, but it's too over-the-top to continue. I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that? > Dropbox has the distinction of being the only cloud service—and perhaps the only startup—ever to compete simultaneously against Apple ($748 billion market cap), Google ($369 billion), Microsoft ($357 billion), Amazon ($173 billion), and Tencent ($160 billion). > Unlike his amply finan…

It's called native advertising and unfortunately it's what publications are betting on to survive in an era of ad blockers.

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#22

Post by dguaraglia » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 1:41 AM UTC

Cookingboy wrote: post #2

Love this following paragraph: "Houston is also working hard to ensure that Dropbox feels like a collection of peers, at all levels of the company. It’s a philosophy that appeals to many Dropbox employees. On a chilly night in San Francisco’s Financial District, Ilya Fushman, head of business and mobile products, and Agarwal join Houston and me for dinner at the Battery, an exclusive restaurant and private club. Desp…

This is purely a PR piece. I'd guess there's not much editing going on, so claims like that will go through to the reader as long as they make it through Dropbox's PR (which is originating the piece to begin with.)

So, yeah, those are some extraordinary claims there, and nobody's going to check on them. Journalism is mostly dead in this country (except for some rare exceptions.)

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#23

Post by capkutay » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 2:16 AM UTC

boomzilla wrote: post #15

capkutay wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that?" I'm sure being a cheerleader for big companies with massive PR budgets is a nice revenue stream for these online media outlets.

Remember when Google was trying to fly under the radar because they were afraid that Microsoft would find out how much money they were making selling ads on search result pages. Anyone knows if any company is doing that today? It seems we only know about start-up companies through PR pieces (oh pardon me, I mean objective journalism of the highest quality).

I feel like that's almost impossible to do today especially with enterprise products (e.g. google selling ads to businesses). I think people now are accustomed to using products they've come across online and anything else is too foreign and strange.

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#24

Post by arfar » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 2:18 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #18

arikrak wrote: post #7

I only started the article, but it's too over-the-top to continue. I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that? > Dropbox has the distinction of being the only cloud service—and perhaps the only startup—ever to compete simultaneously against Apple ($748 billion market cap), Google ($369 billion), Microsoft ($357 billion), Amazon ($173 billion), and Tencent ($160 billion). > Unlike his amply finan…

This is getting a bit meta https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9292110

Are you quoting yourself, quoting yourself?

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#25

Post by funkyy » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 4:32 AM UTC

boomzilla wrote: post #15

capkutay wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that?" I'm sure being a cheerleader for big companies with massive PR budgets is a nice revenue stream for these online media outlets.

Remember when Google was trying to fly under the radar because they were afraid that Microsoft would find out how much money they were making selling ads on search result pages. Anyone knows if any company is doing that today? It seems we only know about start-up companies through PR pieces (oh pardon me, I mean objective journalism of the highest quality).

Kickstarter and Cloudflare - both have been keeping all their financials in the secret until they have murdered most of the competition. Most of the users would come from word of mouth.

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#26

Post by grinich » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 4:41 AM UTC

pronoiac wrote: post #20

sandipc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

symlink your home directory into your dropbox folder?

I'd be wary of a Dropbox folder that contains a link to a parent directory of itself, with the possibility of an infinite loop.

They've taken care of that edge case (and many others).

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#27

Post by yalogin » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 4:45 AM UTC

Glad I am not the only one thinking that its almost a paid advertisement for Dropbox. It looks particularly suspicious given the Amazon unlimited storage announcement.

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#28

Post by vonklaus » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 4:51 AM UTC

dguaraglia wrote: post #22

Cookingboy wrote: post #2

Love this following paragraph: "Houston is also working hard to ensure that Dropbox feels like a collection of peers, at all levels of the company. It’s a philosophy that appeals to many Dropbox employees. On a chilly night in San Francisco’s Financial District, Ilya Fushman, head of business and mobile products, and Agarwal join Houston and me for dinner at the Battery, an exclusive restaurant and private club. Desp…

This is purely a PR piece. I'd guess there's not much editing going on, so claims like that will go through to the reader as long as they make it through Dropbox's PR (which is originating the piece to begin with.) So, yeah, those are some extraordinary claims there, and nobody's going to check on them. Journalism is mostly dead in this country (except for some rare exceptions.)

A HNer made this same point in a different thread today. The child comment pointed out that (i'm paraphrasing) "people don't pay for journalism or content, so the only way to monetize it is as a vehicle to drive traffic and push ads.

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#29

Post by brymaster » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 5:00 AM UTC

inevrela wrote: post #12

Proud user of Dropbox, lot of people around me using it as well, even received 50gb of storage with my S3. I guess I know what it does, but thinking about Business version - anyone here with any cons? Especially in terms of sharing stuff in/out of the company?

Found some cons http://www.drop-dropbox.com/

Re: Dropbox Versus The World

#30

Post by andrewfong » Tue, Mar 31, 2015, 5:05 AM UTC

notsrg wrote: post #5

"Your whole computing environment ought to follow you around," explains Houston. "Your financial records, your health information, your music playlist . . . anything that’s ‘mine.’ I really hope no one is storing their financial records and health information on Dropbox...

You're not the only one who thinks that way, but I actually have a hard time justifying that level of concern to myself. I mean, how much added risk is there for the average user in storing her financial records and health information on Dropbox vs. anything else she might store in the cloud?

As far as worst case scenarios go, the financial system does a decent job of making you whole in the event of fraud, and doctors don't rely (solely) upon the stuff in your Dropbox account to make important medical decisions.

That's not to say there's no danger. There's obviously no shortage of Bad Things that could be done with your financial and medical information, but for most people, it's not much worse than the Bad Things that could be done with the photos they share on Facebook, the e-mails they archive in Gmail, or the phone numbers and addresses scattered across countless unsecured databases around the web. In fact, I'd argue that most Dropbox users would be more concerned about Dropbox leaking their private photos and letters than credit card statements and medical bills.