They had some great miss opportunities with Paper and easy storage, but it seems they stopped on the MVP stage
Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
361–370 of 466 posts
Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
Click “keep files on my device”. I had to uncheck this box since I let my OneDrive (business) account bloat up to 2TB.
This should be the default behavior. Microsoft deliberately chose not to because keeping your files in the cloud is a barrier to easy switching.
Probably because the 1TB of storage you get with Microsoft 365 (or whatever it is called now) for I’ve had OneDrive for a very long time, and there was a couple of years where they didn’t have the files on demand feature as they rewrote the OneDrive client. It was a major regression for me.
If you don’t like that behavior, you can always just check the box to sync everything. I do that on my machine that has 2TB of storage.
Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
The value proposition of Dropbox is exactly that it is an independent service, in my view (in addition to having best-in-class desktop integration). Google/Apple/Microsoft can’t compete with that almost by definition. While not everyone values that, I suspect that enough people do to warrant Dropbox’ existence.
For an individual sure, but the vast majority of their business is corporate contracts which don't think that way. Generally it is impossible to understand Dropbox's strategy if you think about individual purchasers as significant. Iirc they mostly serve as a marketing funnel for team- and business-sized contracts. (although this varies from year to year, sometimes they do focus on e.g. family plans for revenue)
Hmm, tend to disagree, but this is just an educated guess of mine. Seems like business have more specific needs that individuals, and would guess that Dropbox has many small features targeted for just companies (richer api's, more stability, more customization). Yeah, at least in my opinion, the larger the business, the more features they need.
Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
#364Aside from the issue of platform owners (Apple, Google, Microsoft) offering storage sync as an integrated feature, which others have pointed out, the other reason growth is limited is that filesystem storage and sync thereof has become less critical over time. Our apps increasingly do cloud-native walled-garden storage: docs in Google Docs / Notion / Confluence, mocks in Figma, etc. And code was cloud-native with ver…
I'm sure there's also some number of users (like myself) that don't like the idea of a large company having access to their unencrypted files. I also found Dropbox just started take on more and more bloat in what seems an obvious attempt to compete with Box and others.
Yep, the product was so much better when it was minimal and focused on doing one specific thing well. I really miss what it used to be... I hate the current Dropbox and Google Drive and OneDrive are also terrible alternatives.
Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
#365I walked into the Mint one night because I liked to grab a bad cocktail and some good karaoke.. some guy got on stage and belted out a beautiful version of Rocket Man. I looked closed and it was Drew.
Guy has pipes.
Oh his software was pretty good too.
Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure there's also some number of users (like myself) that don't like the idea of a large company having access to their unencrypted files. I also found Dropbox just started take on more and more bloat in what seems an obvious attempt to compete with Box and others.
Yep, the product was so much better when it was minimal and focused on doing one specific thing well. I really miss what it used to be... I hate the current Dropbox and Google Drive and OneDrive are also terrible alternatives.
What you want is the simplified version of Dropbox:
https://help.dropbox.com/installs/simplified-desktop-applica...
Here's a screenshot:
https://i.imgur.com/7g2xRJP.png
It's just a non-intrusive little menu that lives on your system tray. No ads, nags, bloat or unwanted new "features" shoved onto you. It resembles their original software much more than it does the latest slop they've been pushing.
The context menu shortcuts in File Explorer for Copy Link, Share, and View on Dropbox still work. Sync works. Most of the other cruft is gone. It's great. It was so refreshing when it got installed. I would have left Dropbox by now without it.
Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a lot to be said for staying small and doing one thing really, really well. Any time a service I like tries to expand their business, usually to appease investors, that's when things start to go downhill and I start looking for alternatives.
> There is a lot to be said for staying small and doing one thing really, really well. Man. 1Password is another example of this. They've chased growth and no longer seem to be able to build a browser extension that actually works. I've been seriously considering dropping 1PW because of it.
Funny you bring it up. I was a 1Password user for 18 years and just migrated off it last month when they announced the price hike. It has only been working 50% of the time, and the lack of a reliable auto-fill is a security risk… yet they are raising the price so all their Avenger backers can get a return on their investment. A bunch of movie stars investing in a password manager feels like a huge red flag to me.
I ended up moving to Apple passwords. I really wanted to keep my password manager platform agnostic, but if I’m being a realist, all my stuff is from Apple, they have a history of long-term support, and so far it’s worked great on all the sites 1Password struggled with. There are features I miss, and I did need to manually validate each imported entry and do some manual cleanup, but I was able to transition relatively quickly with a DB of over 400 accounts.
Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see the need to become bloated like slack and a one size fits all application. They do a great job with the product they have. Is there anything wrong with just being what you are? Why does the lack of a second act need to be a bad thing if your first product is great and still extremely valuable? I would also if anything put Zoom in with Dropbox, they have a product that is by far the most enjoyable to use i…
Zoom is great, but it's hard to argue for paying $x per user when you're already paying $x per user for email/office and "teams is free".
Teams being free doesn't make teams good. Just like Google Drive and OneDrive being packaged in for cheap doesn't make them good. It is clear why they are lower value.
Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the aftermath of World War I, birth rates in the United States and many European countries fell below replacement level. This prompted concern about population decline.[8] The recovery of the birth rate in most Western countries around 1940 that produced the "baby boom", with annual growth rates in the 1.0 – 1.5% range, and which peaked during the period 1962–1968 at 2.1% per year,[13] temporarily dispelled prio…
I'm not so sure that global population growth tells the right story vis-à-vis declining birth rates in western countries.
As long as everybody is nationalist (not to say racist) and keeps borders closed to protect the homeland, those differences matter. Realizing that one thing people get worked up about (immigration) is a solution to the other thing they get worked up about (not enough kids!!1) would be a great insight.
Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
#370I recently placed some PDF files for some nontechnical people on Dropbox. To avoid confusing them with the long complicated Dropbox URL, I even created a shortened link for them to use (think https://event.myorg.test ). Almost none of them had Dropbox accounts. I found out later from someone that 90% of them couldn’t access the files. The link didn’t require a login but they made it look to the unsophisticated observ…
My elderly mother ended up with a Dropbox subscription because someone sent her a file on Dropbox, that she could technically access for free, but she got dark patterned into creating an account and subscribing. To a yearly plan no less