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

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 466 posts

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#431

Post by diogenescynic »

rkagerer wrote: post #366
diogenescynic wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

Thanks, I didn't even know this existed. It reminds me of how Reddit made the entire experience hostile unless you know to use old.reddit.com instead of the default URL.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#432

Post by mrhottakes »

asdff wrote: post #254
throwaway894345 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exponential growth can’t last forever, and I do worry about what will happen when the gravy train stops. Maybe we can figure out interstellar travel before it does so the limiting factor becomes “the galaxy” rather than “our planet”.

Not everything is in the exponential growth model. Most small businesses in your town for example. Margins might afford an upper middle class lifestyle for the owner and that is a good enough business model for this company to last decades, even pass down through the family.

Don't worry, private equity is working diligently to make sure that can't happen anymore.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#433

Post by mrhottakes »

babypuncher wrote: post #221
bhouston wrote: post #124

Dropbox's stock has been stuck at around $6B valuation for years with flat growth and income around $2.5B per year. It is just stuck. Box.com, which is quite similar, is not that different. Around $3B and $1.2B in income. Similar valuation. I think it is the market, not the leadership. It is a tough market that has cut off the consumer end because all the big players have their own deeply integrated solutions: Apple…

Are they profitable? Is there any reason they can't be happy just turning a regular profit? This "growth at all costs" mindset feels toxic.

That mindset is the organizing principle for most of the modern world. Let's see how that works out!

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#434

Post by saghm »

hackyhacky wrote: post #417
teiferer wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but no one is really complaining about "not enough kids." They are complaining about not enough kids of their preferred skin tone . So they see immigration as an exacerbation.

I can't help but agree here. "Declining birth rate in the western world" just comes across as a dog-whistle to me. I guess I kind of only alluded to this myself with my response that they were being "weirdly cagey", and I wish I had been more direct like you were willing to, so thank you for this

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#435

Post by thewebguyd »

p2detar wrote: post #401
thewebguyd wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would rather pay for 1 product that does 7 things ok than 7 products that do 1 thing great each See Microsoft/Office 365. Aggressive bundling means one license gets you literally everything. Sure, it's all mediocre but it checks boxes and is largely "good enough." No reason to go out and buy slack, zoom, box.com/dropbox, 3rd party email gateways, 3rd party EDR, DLP, an MDM, etc. Microsoft will sell you whatever "ch…

And what do we do when Microsoft kills the competition and hikes up the prices? They already did some time ago by the way. [0] 0 - https://www.reddit.com/r/Office365/comments/1iwfgzn/with_the...

Throw our hands up and go "wow, never saw that coming!"

In reality, the bundling should have been addressed in the courts via antitrust a long time ago before we got to this point. OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint Storage, InTune, PowerAutomate, etc should all be separate, standalone products. They are heavily subsidized for market capture.

The EU tried, and now Microsoft has to keep an M365 tier without Teams, but it's only $8/user/month cheaper, conveniently cheaper than slack still and pre-integrated. Its malicious compliance.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#436

Post by pipes »

panta wrote: post #408
willsmith72 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the knock on them is exactly that, 20 years later they're just a file storage saas. the idea was they must be able to expand the surface area over time

I've been a paying customer since their early days. Their value, at least in my view, lies precisely in that they are just a file storage SaaS. They are focused on doing one thing and doing it well. The day this will change they'll lose me as a customer.

I thought they already kinda did. The UI has a load of features I am not interested in. I spent hours turning of the sync on opening file feature they have, can't recall the name of it now. But to turn it off was a ridiculous effort of web searches and lying documentation.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#437

Post by insanitybit »

runtime_terror wrote: post #353
insanitybit wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want E2E, encrypt your data yourself. By far the simplest, safest solution to the problem.

Simplest? How so

Using `age` or `rage` is deadly easy. Also, e2e is most effective when it happens out of band - if the idea is "I don't trust Dropbox, so I want client side encryption" then you shouldn't trust them to do the e2e anyways. I realize it can be more complex, but managing it yourself gives you the maximal benefits of e2e.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#438

Post by insanitybit »

tonymet wrote: post #355
insanitybit wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The agent, sync engine, file storage (and custom hardware for it), ACL system, file previews, etc, are all highly complex projects in their own rights that Dropbox actively works on and maintains.

wasn't that all completed in 2006?

Not even close, no.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#439

Post by gonzalohm »

caconym_ wrote: post #430
gonzalohm wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised by how many people mention Syncthing as an alternative to Dropbox or Google drive. It's not. Syncthing forces you to have a copy of your data on all your devices. With Dropbox or Google drive you can "stream" only the files you need. This is important when you want to share GB of data with devices that can't sync everything into local storage (like a phone)

I actively don't want this feature and its appearance in Dropbox is one of the major factors that drove me to look for an alternative. Needing to constantly stay abreast of feature churn to make sure I understand how and where my files are stored is not for me, nor is reliance on the weird hacks they use to implement it "transparently" across different platforms. I separate my files in Syncthing into different shared…

That makes sense. But Dropbox was never designed like that. It has always been a client-server service. Syncthing is P2P so it's not a replacement.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#440

Post by runtime_terror »

insanitybit wrote: post #437
runtime_terror wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplest? How so

Using `age` or `rage` is deadly easy. Also, e2e is most effective when it happens out of band - if the idea is "I don't trust Dropbox, so I want client side encryption" then you shouldn't trust them to do the e2e anyways. I realize it can be more complex, but managing it yourself gives you the maximal benefits of e2e.

I agree if you care about security it's better to DIY, it's just not simpler than say putting a file in Proton Drive
Post reply on HN