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Yes - you could regard Dropbox as simply a different pricing model for S3 Amazon, you pay for what you use, Dropbox you pay (more than S3) for 50Gb, you use le
by oiujhygtfyhjuk 16y ago
Yes - you could regard Dropbox as simply a different pricing model for S3
Amazon, you pay for what you use, Dropbox you pay (more than S3) for 50Gb, you use less than that Dropbox make money from you. They also aggressively hash data chucks to avoid storing the same data from different people twice - while charging both of you.
None of this is bad - they have a great product - but it's how they do it.
- rubyrescue 16y agoDropbox is so much more than a different pricing model though. i just think of the hundreds of insanely non-technical people i know who say to me "wow, dropbox changed my life". how many non-technical people say that about s3? <edit since i can't reply below - it could have been built on something other than s3 - its the user experience that makes Dropbox so compelling>
- tybris 16y agoUhm. S3 enabled Dropbox. By definition, it changed the world more than Dropbox.
- archenemy 16y agoI don't think so. Bear with me as the analogy is not all the way there, but small nuclear 'pebble' reactors already exist. Not that much people care... BUT the company that makes them available to the masses cheap and safely will change the world.
- dasil003 16y agoThis is trivially wrong unless somehow you think Dropbox is simply a thin UI layer over S3. Which, if you really do think that, is the type of dismissive attitude that armchair Web 2.0 pundits like to spout off without any clue what goes into building a good user experience.
- Legion 16y agoThat makes sense. We should rewrite the history books to reframe everything as the achievements of carbon.
- nuclear_eclipse 16y ago> you could regard Dropbox as simply a different pricing model for S3 I think a better analogy is that you pay more for a simpler and friendlier interface to S3...
- msy 16y agoI wasn't aware of the agressive hashing - interesting. I wonder if they're actually operating at a scale where there'd be a real risk of a hash collision causing data loss for some very confused poor sod.
- LiveTheDream 16y agoThe Venti archival storage system paper might be an interesting read for you[1]. The researchers deemed Sha1 (160-bit) acceptable to hash 8Kb data blocks for an exabyte of data (10^18 bytes). The risk of collision at that level is less than 10^-20. There are now 512-bit sha hashes, so that takes it to another level. So, I think Dropbox is safe from hash collision risks at this point. [1] http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/venti/ http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/venti/
- ovi256 16y agoI'm pretty sure they added some secondary identity checking mechanism. After hash match, you can compare the first x kbytes of the documents for example.
- 27182818284 16y ago>They also aggressively hash data chucks to avoid storing the same data from different people twice If one user uploads a large movie and another goes to upload the same large movie, is the upload nearly instant then as a result? Do they sha1 the file, decide it is the same, and then just make an association that this file is now used by two users?
- oiujhygtfyhjuk 16y agoYes - at least when I upload identical large data chunks on different machines the second one finishes instantly. It also means moves and renames of files in the dropbox folder are instant