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

Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 199 posts

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#91

Post by mayneack »

toxik wrote: post #81
zer0defex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nail on the head right here. The only thing Dropbox has these days is consumer confidence in it's syncing process. Beyond that, they trail every competitor feature-wise and frankly, they are succeeding despite their management, not because of it. Recent product enhancements have been, let's be honest, mediocre at best across the board and show no signs of that changing anytime soon. They exist now solely due to brand…

I agree. The whole Carousel thing has just been really confusing. It's telling me Carousel is deprecated, but there is simply no way to "go back" to Dropbox -- you still have to use it to synchronize photos to Dropbox. Stupid stuff. The only reason I use Dropbox is that it is not made by either Apple, Microsoft or Google, so I can sort of trust that there will be client support for all platforms.

What do you mean there's no way to go back? Uninstall carousel and it works like old Dropbox (in my experience on android).

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#92

Post by gaius »

Toenex wrote: post #18
thinkingkong wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what?

Given Apples 7.6% share of the 'PC' market as reported in 3Q15 ( http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617 ) I wouldn't be suprised that the vast majority of dropbox users are on Windows, simply because the vast majority of computer users are.

It's not about users. Its about paying customers.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#93

Post by azinman2 »

tyre wrote: post #41
azinman2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for Dropbox, and their sync is the industry's best. They'll be here in 5. 10 is the bigger question mark when files go away.

> when files go away. Can you expand on that? What do you see replacing files?

Everything is shifting to mobile and web, and we don't have files on mobile or web.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#94

Post by azinman2 »

bsaul wrote: post #51
tyre wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when files go away. Can you expand on that? What do you see replacing files?

i suppose that once every software comes from the cloud and their data is stored in the cloud as well, you'll barely "see" your files anymore. but i don't think it will happen anytime soon. even on iOS, i often find the need to make data backups using files.

Data backups of what?

iCloud backs up your entire phone. Most apps store stuff remotely on their servers. And even in the case of photos various services will sync those off your phone as well.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#95

Post by tdkl »

I wish they had more choice regarding purchasing more space. I'm not interested in 1TB and find 10$ per month too much if I wont even use 10% of it. Although if there is a cloud provider I'd trust that sync would never fuck up, I'd be Dropbox.

Google Drive still thinks it's normal to re-download the cloud folder instead of letting me install Drive in the same location after a system reinstall, where all the files already exist. And to trust them 1TB with that behaviour ? Hahaha.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#96

Post by coldtea »

Spooky23 wrote: post #68

> Dropbox is not laying off workers or shrinking; it hired nearly 500 people last year, 75 since the start of this year, and it plans to soon move into a sprawling, custom-designed office building for which it has signed a long-term lease. Honest question: WTF are they doing?

>Honest question: WTF are they doing?

Have an actual profitable syncing business with several pricing tiers and tons of hooks to third party apps?

I mean, unlike tons of billion-valued "unicorns" that not only don't have an income plan (apart from "some day we'll maybe sell ads") but are also losing money.

You'd be surprised with how many 1000+ people companies are there, profitable and fine in all kinds of sectors, that are way less known than Dropbox.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#97

Post by rikkus »

Reasons it's still in the game:

1. It works, with fewer problems than any other sync / cloud storage that I've used.

2. It has enough people using it outside of work that it's getting paying business customers (the Linux effect?)

If either of these falters (if 1 falters, 2 does too) then they'll be gone. There are plenty of competitors and some even do sync well enough that people will use them.

I'm rather upset that they've dropped Carousel, as it's probably the app my girlfriend and I use most on our phones, but I'd only leave Dropbox if they didn't fold enough of the Carousel features back into the Dropbox client - or there wasn't a third party app that could provide similar functionality using our Dropbox storage.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#98

Post by mangeletti »

shasta wrote: post #86
Spooky23 wrote: post #68

> Dropbox is not laying off workers or shrinking; it hired nearly 500 people last year, 75 since the start of this year, and it plans to soon move into a sprawling, custom-designed office building for which it has signed a long-term lease. Honest question: WTF are they doing?

I expect they're going to branch out into physical storage. Prediction: by 2020, there will be thousands of DropBox locations where you can rent space ranging from a small locker to a large garage. If they're smart, they'll start in rural areas.

Interesting; what made you think of this?

Also, will I be able to sync my locker with my desk drawer? :)

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#99

Post by ZacharyPitts »

kobayashi wrote: post #57
thestu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about him, but I use -- https://www.sync.com/

This is the first I'm hearing about Sync. Any comparison with SpiderOak?

Ever since drop-dropbox happened due to Rice, I've been happily using SpiderOak on Windows/OSX/Android/iOS systems.

Fine interface with customizable options that I need.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#100

Post by morgante »

sharkweek wrote: post #40
InvisibleCities wrote: post #28

Dropbox has the same problem a lot of the moderately successful unicorns have; it's a good product managed by smart people that would be much better off as a right-sized stable lifestyle business a la 37 Signals / Basecamp than as an attempt at a world-beating massive-growth juggernaut like Google or Facebook. Unfortunately for them (and Evernote, and a whole host of others), once you've signed that deal for the huge…

The problem being, how many of these businesses would have won any market share without early VC investment enabling the companies to dump money into customer acquisition at a loss? Probably a few of them, but I'm guessing some other company with a similar business model would have come along with VC backing and eaten their lunch (sure, that company might then be in the exact same place as the current over-valued lat…

> The problem being, how many of these businesses would have won any market share without early VC investment enabling the companies to dump money into customer acquisition at a loss?

The problem isn't with early VC money. Dropbox's early backers would have still made a gigantic return on Dropbox setting at a $1bn valuation.

Really, it's not even a problem with their series B ($250M at $4bn). $4bn is a reasonable eventual valuation for Dropbox.

The problem is that they didn't stop there. They raised another $850M in 2014 (in two rounds), which was basically sold on the promise of it being necessary to "win" the storage wars and acquire a monopoly.

By 2014, Dropbox was already a stable company with hundreds of millions in revenue. The only reason to raise money was to shoot for hitting Google/Facebook status (owning a lucrative monopoly). If they had instead accepted that their eventual outcome was a $3-5bn software company, everyone could have won: employees, investors, founders, etc. (Atlassian is an example of a company which did eventually raise substantial VC, but instead of gunning for a monopoly IPOed at a $4bn valuation.)

The problem is that founders ultimately have huge egos and want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page: commanding monopolies so lucrative that they can spend billions on zero-return "cool nerd shit."

Post reply on HN