How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions • Hacker News Board

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#41

Post by opnitro » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 2:07 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #14

anoncoward111 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive

Google Drive is like "I guess you can use the desktop client instead of the web one". One Drive is like "I guess you can use a Mac". iCloud is like "I guess you can have non-Apple devices". Dropbox just syncs your files from and to anything you have, equally well. I'm pretty sure none of the others even have a Linux client at all, but Dropbox does.

Yeah, this is really it. Dropbox just let's you use it they way you want, because they have no larger agenda than letting you share your files with yourself.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#42

Post by samfisher83 » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 2:11 AM UTC

I wonder how those friends who turned him down feel. That would an interesting article to write. I am sure they are mostly super successful, but would still make an interesting article to read.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#43

Post by brian-armstrong » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 2:12 AM UTC

Did anyone ever figure out what came of bringing a Bush cabinet member on board? Contract for mining data for NSA/FBI?

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#44

Post by ValentineC » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 2:12 AM UTC

kornish wrote: post #40

toomanybeersies wrote: post #33

Slightly off topic, but I discovered the other day that shared folders count towards the disk quota for each account it's shared to. I had several GB of photos shared with me on Dropbox, and it blew right over my free limit, despite the fact that none of them were actually mine. The photos also count towards the quota of the account sharing with me. That's soured me quite a lot on Dropbox.

That's probably done to prevent people from creating many free accounts and sharing folders with each other to simulate having more storage space.

Google Drive seems to have done this right — the file only counts towards the storage quota of the creator/"owner" of the file.

That particular approach does have some other issues though.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#45

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 2:17 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #8

anoncoward111 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive

I've mainly stayed because I don't want to support the mega-corporations when there's a smaller ($12bn counts as "smaller" these days...) company doing a fine job. That aside, I appreciate that they've mostly stayed focused on the core task of syncing files between computers, that there's no bias in terms of devices or OSes, and that their client software tends to work just a little bit better than the competition.

I can’t see myself paying $10/month for Dropbox when I can get Office365 for the same price with 1tb apiece for up to five users, plus office for 5 computers, and 5 iPads.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#46

Post by scarface74 » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

ebikelaw wrote: post #21

I noticed the word "profit" doesn't appear anywhere in the article. Will Dropbox ever make money?

Exactly. It kills me that the definition of a successful company is rarely - being able to deliver a product profitably.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#47

Post by draw_down » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #6

When Google Drive and iCloud and One Drive all cropped up, copying the same service with the addition of deeper integration into different devices and software, I was worried Dropbox would be unable to compete. But they've hung in there, and I remain a happy customer.

My workplace switched from Dropbox to Google Drive and it has been a real pain in the butt. It just works worse in many regards, all across the product. People like(d) to say it’s just a feature, except they execute on that feature better than everyone else.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#48

Post by berbec » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #36

madengr wrote: post #31

Still fathoms me that Dropbox is worth billions of $ for the same functionality as FTP.

And that’s exactly why they’re billionaires and you probably aren’t. It isn’t about functionality, it’s about ease of use. It’s the same argument used when MS-DOS was being replaced by the GUI. Explain FTP to your Aunt Edna. Get FTP working where everything on all devices is in sync automatically. Comment on a file via FTP. Send a link to a file they can consume on a mobile device — including playing audio or video w…

That is a genius reply. This should be what people think every time they say no to a new idea with "put isn't this just xxxx, but a little simpler?". A little simpler can be very broad and Dropbox has done just what the founder envisioned - made a web-based flash drive.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#49

Post by matte_black » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

How many schools allow you to recontinue your education again if you drop out to start a company but it fails?

Seems like if I had this option I would have dropped out at least once.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#50

Post by marzipan » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 3:11 AM UTC

I used Dropbox from 2009 through last month or so. Switched over to Syncthing. I was a little bit worried about stability but soon after I sampled it I felt convinced that it was the right move. I was previously using Dropbox as a kind of makeshift backup as well as a sync tool, but now I have a desktop again and run automated backups on that using Backblaze, so I'm a little bit more in control over the data by doing my own syncing.