Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

blogs.dropbox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 435 posts

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#391

Post by morganvachon »

chrisau wrote: post #390

Assholes. Getting sick of big companies buying great small products, and shutting them down after "trying" to make them work out. Still hadn't had time to get over MS killing Sunrise, and now this.

Indeed, I had finally taken the plunge on Carousel for its killer feature: Freeing up space on my 16GB iPhone while having the photos instantly available if I needed them. Carousel was a breath of fresh air; it had no issues with backing up photos over WiFi or cellular data, unlike the main Dropbox app. Now it's back to the unreliable and slow Dropbox app for photo syncing.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#394

Post by aylmao »

calgoo wrote: post #39

I wish they could open source Mailbox at least... That way it might survive. [1] "Will Mailbox be open-sourced? Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying system, but this is ultimately not something we will support." [1] https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/

https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-app/sha...

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#395

Post by slg »

chrisau wrote: post #390

Assholes. Getting sick of big companies buying great small products, and shutting them down after "trying" to make them work out. Still hadn't had time to get over MS killing Sunrise, and now this.

Are these really even products if they have no plans or even really options for monetization? Mailbox was a free app with no ads and no freemium features. It was doomed from the start. Although Kudos to the founders there that were able to turn a good idea, a great marketing strategy, and a couple months of work from a small team into an immediate 9 figure exit. Those founders knew what they were doing.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#397

Post by brandonbloom »

chrisau wrote: post #390

Assholes. Getting sick of big companies buying great small products, and shutting them down after "trying" to make them work out. Still hadn't had time to get over MS killing Sunrise, and now this.

While I too dislike when stuff I use is shutdown, there's another possible way to look at this. Maybe the product lived a much longer life than it would have otherwise, had the original creators abandoned it after failing to make sufficient money on it directly.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#398

Post by rtpg »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #311
untog wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because there simply isn't money to be made in being an e-mail startup. Or, more correctly, there isn't enough money to be made to satisfy VC investors. Mailbox and the like could have lived quite comfortably as paid-for apps with comfortable but small levels of profit, but that isn't what Silicon Valley rewards. EDIT: also, IIRC Apple's restrictions on background processing meant that they needed to have ev…

That's because making a big pile of money the Silicon Valley way requires two things: a product, and a moat. It's not hard to create an email product, but email moats are hard because it's an anarchist technology by design.

You can make an alright pile of money without the moat. Perhaps the problem is the kool-aid level in the companies making this stuff...

Though they are making good things, so it's hard to be too critical.

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#399

Post by nimrod0 »

avitzurel wrote: post #116
austenallred wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still hoping they'll sell them to someone. Dropbox is obviously planning to go a different direction with its core product strategy, so that makes sense to me, but those products were too good to just let die. I'm sure someone would be willing to take them off of Dropbox's hands.

That would be the rational thing to do. I don't believe it will happen though. If it was going to happen it would before they announced they're shutting it down. I just don't get how you can spend 100m$ on something and just let it die. What did Dropbox get out of this deal? SV is depressing sometimes.

They got the brains and patents (if applicable).

Re: Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox

#400

Post by skuhn »

avitzurel wrote: post #56

This is very sad news and I don't really get the decision. The thing with Mailbox is that it was truly a great product before it switched hands to Dropbox. Once they bought it, that was the end of good functions and the product only went downhill from there. There's a lot of potential with email clients that will help you work better, Mailbox was definitely one of those products that helped. With good clients for Mac…

So you're saying that Mailbox was a great product for the whole month between when it launched and Dropbox acquired it?

I can tell you that behind the scenes it was far from a well architected service, and the only reason why it was able to ditch the signup waitlist and ultimately handle the needs of its userbase was entirely due to the Dropbox acquisition.

Post reply on HN