For comparison, Webvan hit $8 billion market cap, losing $400 million a year, Uber's on $69 billion (hasn't even IPOd yet) losing $3 billion last year.
Hundreds of dubious cryptocurrencies of which a few might make it far.
So in a way, I think you and the parent are both right -- you are talking about different sides of the same thing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Bogle#Investment_philo...
The issue is whether a society that has mutated to a system funneling meaningful wealth gains to 0.01% of its members is on the path to long term health or on the certain path to some sort of catastrophic system failure with a generous dolling out of collatoral damage to the 99.99% that were on the receiving end of "value added" goods and services [only].
EDIT: my username is not a coincidence here...
There were a lot of busts from that era and the average person isn't going to be able pick them well.
As for the average person picking well, I encourage you to look at the Motley Fool community. There you'll find literally millions of hobbyist investors, some who have been chatting together since the mid 90s and many, many people doing well. Even looking at the medium-active CAPS player (basically their over/under prediction board where anyone can make bull or bear cases on any stock), it's better than what you'd get giving your money to Wealthfront or some other manager.
Blocking retail investors from micro caps would just be one more way insulating the rich from competition with the conscientious. As bad as Sarbox has been, that would be an entirely new way to make the US system less equitable for the masses.
From a demo hacked together over a few months (written in Python, IIRC) and posted on HN to an IPO. Pretty cool, honestly.
One of them describes his solution with FUSE and FTP that 'basically achieves the same' and has doubts that anyone would want to use Dropbox if they can use FTP.
Same stuff surely happens here today.
It's a pity they hide the vote numbers these days.
This is exactly what gives me hope when I post a sideproject here or on reddit and it is either met with radio silence or active resistance. I'm starting to suspect that horses don't actually like water.
[ Sep 15th 2008 ] DropBox Demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE
Given this, I think it's reasonable to ask: what's their value proposition in 2017? I hadn't been following them for a few years, but looking at their landing and pricing page, it's clear they're transitioning away from being a consumer product and focusing on enterprise customers. For those of you that are paying for their consumer offering, I'd be very interested in reading about why you've chosen to stick with em instead of migrating to another service.
I have been paid user of Dropbox for now 4+ years. The reason I have stuck with it because "It works! plain and simple." I have tried other storage services like Google, iCloud and Box. But none match the simplicity, consistency, invisibility, cross-platform, seamless features of Dropbox. Google is untrustworthy because you never know when they discontinue any service. They have no concept of customer service. They might well be running by robots. I experienced Box at work, forced by the work IT group. IT wasn't very willing to hand out Box accounts unless you can justify business use case , people who used it didn't like it. Box interface was always in your way if you wanted to do anything stored in Box, few extra clicks to do anything. Most people who needed to collaborate used free Dropbox to get around all restrictions. iCloud is okay but only seems to work with Apple ecosystem. I still can't figure out how to access files in iCloud from my Mac and iPhone. Works great for photos and contacts but not so much for files. While Dropbox has released new features, I have never bothered with any.
IMO, Dropbox need to continue focusing their service seamless. There only mistake was to not go after business/enterprise earlier. They could have killed Box easily. While Box was hiring consultants and Enterprise sales people to pitch to IT groups (top down) Dropbox had the mindshare of employees (bottoms up). They were Dropbox champions, just Dropbox failed to leverage that in enterprise.
With Dropbox is the same. Some time ago a weird bug occured on my Dropbox account and I reported it. Being paying customer (3 accounts) I expected my issue to be handled professionally, as with most of other services that I use. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. My issue was handled by someone ho had no clue what is the problem and how their service works and looks. During 20+ emails exchange I got mostly advices of reinstalling the applications, etc. They ignored my requests to pass the ticket to someone more knowledgeable. I had to complain on their Facebook page to get the task read by someone else and (finally) get passed to "analysis". But then, weeks passed without word from them. When I finally asked about the progress, I got answer meaning "your issue is not important enough for us, so nobody is working on it right now and don't expect it will change in the near future". Then some time more passed and they finally fixed the bug (it was something on their side, fix was listed in the mobile app changelog). I asked for an account credit for a time when the app wasn't working properly, which influenced my day-to-day work (which is normal with other services), but were repeatedly told to "fk off" in more or less polite way and then ignored completely.
So it seems that Dropbox is introducing the "best" Google customer service policies.
On Mac I just open the iCloud folder and the files are there, just like Dropbox
On iPhone I open the iCloud Drive app and the files are there just like on Mac, much like in Dropbox pp expect Dropbox uses list format.
Personally I like iCloud currently more, but as you said it only works in Apple ecosystem (which I'm currently fine with). Recently I also setup OwnCloud on my RPi and it seems to fill my niche usage just fine as well, but I still don't quite trust it.
- It Just Works™.
- It's bullshit-free. A folder that syncs. No upselling, no storing documents as JSON links only accessible through a web interface (hello Google Office Suite w/ Google Drive).
- Works on Linux.
- Relatively lightweight.
- The "Public" folder, which unfortunately they now retired, was a huge thing that convinced me to use them. With it, sharing anything to people was trivial, and the sharing was bullshit free - no web captive portal or anything, just a direct-to-file link, which I could (and did, a lot) use to e.g. embed images in posts on on-line boards, etc.
Axing the "Public" folder made DropBox lose significantly in my eyes, but I still like the service enough not to switch (and I don't recall anyone else even offering the equivalent of the "Public" folder).
>- Relatively lightweight.
I was once asked to backup all the data in our Dropbox for Business account. 30 users, around 400GB (total).
I installed the Dropbox client on a VM in our data center and waited more than a week while it tried to sync files.
It used a lot of memory, and good lord the download rate was poor. Under 10MBit/sec for a VM which had a Gigabit connection to the internet.
The nail in to coffin for me was that Dropbox for Business administrators don't have access to all the data within the organization. No, every single shared folder must be shared with the account you are using to sync the data.
If a user creates a folder in Dropbox and doesn't share it with the backup user, that data won't be available.
Sadly, in spite of the above, my company is still using Dropbox. We've just given up completely on having a backup of the data in it (IMHO, a decision they will come to regret).
But the experience (also with Dropbox for Business support, who took multiple days to respond to a customer paying them over $5k/year) ruined them for me.
For personal files I use syncthing now.
But your points are valid. The reason others in the company like Dropbox are the client "just works" and their web interface is nicer than OneDrive/Google/NextCloud.
Occasionally I host and transfer large files and the web interface simply works for that. All in all I need about a TB of storage and saving 3 bucks on Amazon Drive won't convince me to give up the advantage of a carefully designed and very clean, solid product.
Web storage feels like an afterthought on most other platforms - has anyone seen Amazon Drive online? It looks horrible, like a prototype or proof of concept. It's similar with OneDrive, though not as bad. Frankly, I prefer to stay with the company that has been making storage their core product for a decade.
Furthermore Dropbox has a healthy eco system and serves as syncing platform or default storage option for many apps.
Yes, Dropbox is one of the rare ones that handle rsync-style rolling checksum syncing.
It’s also the only one to sync FS-specific xattrs properly (like hidden extension on MacOS). Google Drive fails on both points.
I'm a freeloader so I guess I don't fully qualify.
That said, what I like about Sropbox is how it works (and works well) everywhere.
Windows, Linux, Android. At home, at work, on my NAS and in "the cloud".
All other services have major shortcomings if you want universal platform-support.
Reason is simple: I've been burned by Google Drive before. Lost some important documents because I thought they'd synced when they hadn't. Drive - at least back then - was simply unreliable with its synchronization.
Never had that problem with Dropbox
1. Backups all the photos I take with my iPhone automatically.
2. Service integration (E.g. Slack, 1Password, Alfred prefs).
3. Paper is pretty nice, I've been using it lately.
4. User interface is nice and clean.
5. Photo album creation/sharing is nice, but they are removing that feature on the 17th.
6. Screenshot sharing is nice.
7. Enjoyable & clean interface.
Having said that, I have noticed their drift to more enterprise based offerings. Their pricing is a bit steep as well. The only other two providers I've considered are iCloud and Google Drive. I'm not opposed to switching as long as those primary features are matched in another service. I'd also like to compare bandwidth, price per GB, security/privacy in other services. Anyways, just my two cents :)
I keep using Dropbox for now, but without the app installed on my machine, just using the website. The reason being the sneaky way the Dropbox app tried to get Administrator rights to install some tooling on OS X [0].
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[0]: http://applehelpwriter.com/2016/07/28/revealing-dropboxs-dir...
While we're here and speaking of consumer offerings: Has anyone found a satisfactory solution to displaying photos from Dropbox on their TV? Everything I try is clunky.
Any idea why?
Dropbox didnt even have Groups to manage users until just 18 months ago and had silly things like invites for group folders which are all holdovers from their consumer roots.
[1] Version 10.1.1 (12603.2.4)
Google drive is just there, whether I wanted it or not. And that goes for anyone who's signed up for Gmail or YouTube (i.e. collectively 40% of the people I know). It's not quite as nice as Dropbox, but it's right there in that weird 9-squared popup menu every time I check my email.
Kudos to Dropbox for having made it to this point, but how long can they survive against free + connected to your email + everything you save on an Android? What if chromebooks get more popular? I wouldn't short them, but it's really hard to see a big win for them given the market dynamics.
Can they use their early success in sync to bootstrap other products? "Evernote" by Dropbox?
EDIT> This is an honest question, and I'd appreciate informative replies.
But everything new I do is on Google Docs and Spreadsheets, which I love. All my photos now go to Google Photos.
The future seems to be google drive like web apps. Dropbox needs to get into this market. I hope Paper can expand...
I'm not saying acquisitions can't help them grow, but I wanted to make it clear that this stemmed from an acquisition.
Their focus is wholly on owning the file management space, with most profit coming from doing so for enterprises. While the Googles and Apples of the world have found significant success in building entire suites of related products and services (including physical), there are plenty of successful public one-trick pony software companies. Dropbox's key has always been the magical quality of their service, and that's as good a reason to be on the focused-side of the spectrum as any.
My work changed entire email/storage/etc providers almost entirely for the file management system...
[1] https://cdn2.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/05...
Sync can still be improved a lot, and I think whoever does it best will be able to take over most of the market. Dropbox's Infinite could potentially do that. https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-projec...
Why shouldn't they IPO, it's basically the last funding round? Even if they were done growing and ready to start paying dividends now, what would be bad about that?
I suspect, as the article implies "there is increasing pressure to go pubic as investors look to cash out.
What features or new products could Dropbox develop with a few hundred million at they couldn't without?
I think the investors just want to cash out. If there was huge throw potential wouldn't they continue to raise VC money?
75% of Dropbox users are located outside the United States. They have invested heavily in expanding their PoPs and in Europe and Asia. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/19/dropbox-announces-massive-...
The last few years Enterprise customers have been a major target.
https://www.recode.net/2014/3/20/11624780/dropbox-zeros-in-o...
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/16/dropboxs-latest-announceme...
Again S-1 should provide a peek at the rate of adoption. Anecdotally I can share reports of wavering between consumer and enterprise focus.
The strange thing is, that there are still people paying for IPO shares. But as long as they do, why not use it to squeeze the last penny out of the business before starting the next.
I really cannot justify paying £7.99 a month for 1TB of storage, especially when I'll most likely use less than 10% of that space
$10/1TB is not a ratio to be arbitrarily divided, no matter how much people want to assume it should be. Dropbox would lose more revenue from customers downgrading from $10 to $2 than they would gain from the few customers that care about the difference between $0 and $2.
$10 is the floor for Dropbox to care enough to serve any customer. It's a version of "fire your pathological customers", or rather to never acquire them in the first place. SaaS vendors know that the cheapest customers are the biggest headaches. If you care about the difference between $5 and $10, Dropbox doesn't need to care about serving you.
1. It kills machines on startup. My machine had the CPU and HDD maxxed out for 30 minutes every time I started it, rendering it unusable
2. You can only sync a single folder, which is really limiting
3. The syncing algorithm is crap (well, it was for me anyway) - I was constantly resolving conflicts incorrectly
4. Probably a continuation from point 2 - it actually deleted files it shouldn't have
I'm mostly happy with Seafile. I've had a few issues from time to time with the Windows client, but overall a much better experience than with Dropbox.
If I don't want version control over it I also don't need to back it up.
Though the linux client has a CLI that helps a little with disabling certain patterns but no mac equivalent.
It’s a matter of time before Apple rolls out iCloud file/folder sharing (which currently exists in some form already). In addition, they recently announced iMessage "Business Chat" which will likely later include other enterprise functionality.
And that solution won't work on my work-machine running Windows, nor on my home-machines running Linux.
Nor on any machine owned by anyone in my greater family. Because most people don't have Macs.
It will be completely irrelevant outside some niche Apple-only circles. Like most services Apple make.
I'd be surprised if it disrupted Dropbox noticeably.
I have six 2.5" HDD sitting here, along with two 3.5" HDD, all with photos, video, files etc, many are duplicated. There are currently no easy way to sort through this mess. I have to sort it locally before I store it online. Why cant I dump it all to the Cloud and let the sorting happen there?
This is still unusable on PC and likely to be just as bad as iTunes was for years if it gets rolled out to Windows.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/files/
It's not terribly user friendly at the moment - I have wondered if there is a market for a nice easy to use front end for it...
Most users I know are on extensions while their javascript sdk is broken.
It's not super useful for big stuff, but nice if you're trying to write stuff just for yourself.
Reasons are:
1. You just install the client and it works.
2. The files are backed up, while your ftp solution might not be.
3. Your space can grow depending on disk prices without you doing anything for it.
4. A lot of possible merge conflicts between different computers are automatically merged by their smart tooling.
* Very good online file sharing UI
* And no need to run and secure an FTP server
If you use a local copy, you have to set up something to sync it with the cloud version, or sync it manually.
Dropbox keeps a local copy for speed, and also syncs automatically. It's the best of both worlds.
It's also easy to use.
It also keeps a file version history.
It's especially useful if you use multiple devices
