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Dropbox for Gmail

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Re: Dropbox for Gmail

#31

Post by fjarlq »

gohrt wrote: post #29
presumeaway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a feature, not a productive That line was so incisive when I first heard it in 2011 that it's stuck with me ever since: http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2011/10/18/dropbo... Edit: Hey guys, it's the only primary source I could find citing Drew Houston's conversation with Steve Jobs, wherein Steve Jobs stated that Dropbox was a feature, and not a product.

> [Drew Houston] reverse-engineered Apple’s file system so that his startup’s logo, an unfolding box, appeared elegantly tucked inside. Not even an Apple SWAT team had been able to do that. With "Not Even Wrong" incoherent nonsense like that, Forbes doesn't belong on HN.

A hint of explanation of the reverse-engineering:

https://www.quora.com/Many-articles-about-Drew-Houston-say-t...

Update: I haven't found video or slides about Rian Hunter's explanation, but I did find this note about his CUSEC 2012 talk:

At the Dropbox talk, Rian Hunter explained how Dropbox was able to integrate into the Mac OS X finder and the hoops that they had to jump through to implement this feature. The technical aspects of the talk were centered on how the engineers used very low level C code to trick the operating system into thinking that the Dropbox client was a part of the finder when it actually was not. An unexpected but enjoyable surprise was the presence of an Apple engineer who worked on the OS X operating system. It was almost if trying to break the software was a game of cat and mouse between Apple and Dropbox, but in the end, both Rian and the engineer created an extremely informative and enjoyable discussion.

-- http://iwarrior.uwaterloo.ca/2012/02/01/13721/softies-invade...

Re: Dropbox for Gmail

#33

Post by brisance »

malchow wrote: post #17
free2rhyme214 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Tell me how Dropbox is doing in 5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free. Gmail already has google drive integration. Dropbox could've made this chrome plugin years ago. In the future all of Dropbox's revenue will most likely come from SMB's and a few enterprise customers.

"5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free" Stuff like this strikes me as a bit sclerotic and shortsighted. Sort of the techno-utopian flip side of the Malthusians of the 70s[1] arguing that food will run out on Earth. The direction of the cost of storage (down) is predictable. But human behavior is not. And the impact of future innovation on human behavior is also not predictable. That's why o…

What is your assessment of BitTorrent Sync?

Re: Dropbox for Gmail

#34

Post by graeme »

Spooky23 wrote: post #28
malchow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free" Stuff like this strikes me as a bit sclerotic and shortsighted. Sort of the techno-utopian flip side of the Malthusians of the 70s[1] arguing that food will run out on Earth. The direction of the cost of storage (down) is predictable. But human behavior is not. And the impact of future innovation on human behavior is also not predictable. That's why o…

It has an air of truth. Dropbox is bar none the best sync client. Almost unbelievably so. But they were in 2010 too. And if you time travelled from 2010 to 2015, you wouldn't really notice anything materially different between Dropbox then and now.

Does it need to be? Dropbox has suited my needs perfectly from the getgo.

I imagine they have been changing on the enterprise side. I'm just a small business account.

Re: Dropbox for Gmail

#35

Post by wstrange »

Karunamon wrote: post #12
free2rhyme214 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Tell me how Dropbox is doing in 5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free. Gmail already has google drive integration. Dropbox could've made this chrome plugin years ago. In the future all of Dropbox's revenue will most likely come from SMB's and a few enterprise customers.

Dropbox has an app ecosystem, Drive does not. The network effect is strong - if I'm a developer who wants to implement a trivial sync-across-devices feature, I'm going to use Dropbox because it's something my user probably already has. Google Drive offers nothing that Dropbox doesn't, except more storage, which as you mentioned, is quickly becoming meaningless.

There are a boatload of apps that integrate with Google Drive. I am not sure how one can claim that there is no ecosystem; It looks pretty healthy to me.

Re: Dropbox for Gmail

#38

Post by Karunamon »

wstrange wrote: post #35
Karunamon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox has an app ecosystem, Drive does not. The network effect is strong - if I'm a developer who wants to implement a trivial sync-across-devices feature, I'm going to use Dropbox because it's something my user probably already has. Google Drive offers nothing that Dropbox doesn't, except more storage, which as you mentioned, is quickly becoming meaningless.

There are a boatload of apps that integrate with Google Drive. I am not sure how one can claim that there is no ecosystem; It looks pretty healthy to me.

Not in my experience, but perhaps they're finally catching up. Dropbox just seems to be the "go-to".

Re: Dropbox for Gmail

#39

Post by free2rhyme214 »

detaro wrote: post #15
free2rhyme214 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say Dropbox would go away because obviously a player of their market size won't but to say Job's was wrong about them being a feature is also misleading. So they have some clout with developers, SMB's and enterprise customers that's nice but a majority of their revenue comes from consumers who will find a hard time paying for Dropbox when Google will offer Drive for free.

> but a majority of their revenue comes from consumers Really? I would expect the majority of their revenue comes from the business offerings. (I couldn't find any published numbers)

Yes this is why Box was able to get a foothold on the enterprise because Drew ignored it for awhile.

Re: Dropbox for Gmail

#40

Post by free2rhyme214 »

lugg wrote: post #23
free2rhyme214 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Tell me how Dropbox is doing in 5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free. Gmail already has google drive integration. Dropbox could've made this chrome plugin years ago. In the future all of Dropbox's revenue will most likely come from SMB's and a few enterprise customers.

> In the future all of Dropbox's revenue will most likely come from SMB's and a few enterprise customers. If they're smart, it will be. They're just simply not going to make money otherwise. Get users on board for free, create a nice product to use that feels familiar, now tell them to get their bosses to let you use it for work. They've been running that model from the outset, I don't see this as being a huge headac…

This is a good assessment.
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