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I'm curious: why do you feel Dropbox needs to make something new and noteworthy? Why can't it just stick to its knitting, and continue to offer something that w

by 0898 11y ago

I'm curious: why do you feel Dropbox needs to make something new and noteworthy? Why can't it just stick to its knitting, and continue to offer something that works and people find valuable?

untog 11y ago
Why can't it just stick to its knitting, and continue to offer something that works and people find valuable? Because now Google, Microsoft and Amazon offer it at a cheaper price and better integrated with their own products. The broader answer here is "Dropbox took a bunch of VC money, so 'just doing well enough' isn't an option for them and they have to stop at nothing to grow faster"
- zyxley 11y ago
  > Google, Microsoft and Amazon For me, the key part of Dropbox isn't first-party support, it's that a bajillion third-party apps have cross-platform support for it where availability of other services is rather more piecemeal.
  - tacos 11y ago
    Dropbox third-party developer here. Their API and developer support is dogshit. They spent years screwing around with photos when they could've built a platform.
- tajen 11y ago
  > took a bunch of VC money Notes-taking apps have the competition of <div contenteditable="true"/>. There isn't much left to do for a notes-taking app: Everything else is bells and whistles. Responsibilities should be called here. Dropbox, Evernote, Slack and GitHub are all 4 hosting a massive free service, highly replaceable with cheap alternatives, with low switching costs. I sincerely hope the VCs who invest in those companies have another plan than "Add more features forever".
  - volaski 11y ago
    Can't take you seriously when you say Github is highly replaceable. Try and go hosting your open source project on some obscure hosted code repository, let me know when you get lots of contributors.
    - stephenr 11y ago
      Quality > Quantity. Open Source projects existed a long time before GitHub, and will exist a long time after the cool kids abandoned it for whatever reason.
    - michaelt 11y ago
      Oh, the free part of Github isn't easily replaceable. It's great for hosting open source projects. But the private repos and the on-site offering - the things people pay for? Fair bit of competition there.
- est 11y ago
  > cheaper price and better integrated with their own products And in a half-assed way syncing.
cwilkes 11y ago
Check out this article: http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/22/9372563/dropbox-really-is-a-feature http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/22/9372563/dropbox-really-is-... There was another article recently that said that files are old news and people are using Slack. Granted they are shipping files in that, but people have probably moved on to web hosted versions of documents anyway.

by 0898 11y ago

I'm curious: why do you feel Dropbox needs to make something new and noteworthy? Why can't it just stick to its knitting, and continue to offer something that works and people find valuable?

untog 11y ago

Why can't it just stick to its knitting, and continue to offer something that works and people find valuable? Because now Google, Microsoft and Amazon offer it at a cheaper price and better integrated with their own products. The broader answer here is "Dropbox took a bunch of VC money, so 'just doing well enough' isn't an option for them and they have to stop at nothing to grow faster"

zyxley 11y ago
> Google, Microsoft and Amazon For me, the key part of Dropbox isn't first-party support, it's that a bajillion third-party apps have cross-platform support for it where availability of other services is rather more piecemeal.
- tacos 11y ago
  Dropbox third-party developer here. Their API and developer support is dogshit. They spent years screwing around with photos when they could've built a platform.
tajen 11y ago
> took a bunch of VC money Notes-taking apps have the competition of <div contenteditable="true"/>. There isn't much left to do for a notes-taking app: Everything else is bells and whistles. Responsibilities should be called here. Dropbox, Evernote, Slack and GitHub are all 4 hosting a massive free service, highly replaceable with cheap alternatives, with low switching costs. I sincerely hope the VCs who invest in those companies have another plan than "Add more features forever".
- volaski 11y ago
  Can't take you seriously when you say Github is highly replaceable. Try and go hosting your open source project on some obscure hosted code repository, let me know when you get lots of contributors.
  - stephenr 11y ago
    Quality > Quantity. Open Source projects existed a long time before GitHub, and will exist a long time after the cool kids abandoned it for whatever reason.
  - michaelt 11y ago
    Oh, the free part of Github isn't easily replaceable. It's great for hosting open source projects. But the private repos and the on-site offering - the things people pay for? Fair bit of competition there.
est 11y ago
> cheaper price and better integrated with their own products And in a half-assed way syncing.

cwilkes 11y ago

Check out this article: http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/22/9372563/dropbox-really-is-a-feature http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/22/9372563/dropbox-really-is-... There was another article recently that said that files are old news and people are using Slack. Granted they are shipping files in that, but people have probably moved on to web hosted versions of documents anyway.