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They really did seem to be firing on all cylinders early on. Prior to their IPO, I thought it was weird they were spending time to migrate off of AWS versus con

They really did seem to be firing on all cylinders early on. Prior to their IPO, I thought it was weird they were spending time to migrate off of AWS versus continuing to build around their core offering. As it stands now, they could still target consumers with a higher end offering (lots of caching, etc.) if order to at least offer a superior experience to Google Drive, Microsoft, etc.

fermienrico 6y ago
I love Dropbox as a product and happily pay for it. It always works. No fuss. No conflicts, it just works. Something to be said about tools you forget that you’re even paying for, they silently make your life better. Lately, they’re getting slightly annoying though. Designers at Dropbox - it’s a fucking file syncing tool, not a life philosophy. Get over the garish design non sense and allow Guido(retired)...ehhh engineers to do their thing. The problem is the shareholders. Dropbox doesn’t need to grow. It can stay the same and continue to be helpful (and make money, provide a living to many employees). But the goddamn shareholders will ruin a perfectly good product. Public companies get hollowed out and the marrow sucked by the shareholders. I want a Drew Houston & Sons Co.; not Dropbox Incorporated.
- pm90 6y ago
  Small nit: Guido left Dropbox in 2019, he is now retired.
- trimbo 6y ago
  > allow Guido to do his thing Guido van Rossum? He retired. https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/thank-you--guido https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/thank-you--guido
- gumby 6y ago
  > Get over the garish design non sense and allow Guido to do his thing. Guido retired last November.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Oh great. Good for Guido.
- xmodem 6y ago
  In today’s SV mantra, standing still means falling behind, and waiting until you either get disrupted by other startups, copied by big tech, or both. No, something must be done, and trying to force themselves deeper into their customers’ workflows is something. So they did it.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    I think standing still with 500 million users in my book is standing way the hell up there. Boosted into space at this point. Why shy away from competition? Should face it.
- kerneltime 6y ago
  Smugmug.. I love those guys..
- nvarsj 6y ago
  > No fuss. No conflicts, it just works. I felt the same until they stopped supporting most Linux filesystems bizarrely - forcing me to reimage multiple machines. Despite years of perfect behaviour on non-ext4. I also think the price is very high for what I get. Only reason I haven’t swapped to something else is my life is locked into it from the early days. I’d love to drop it at this point. I don’t even need that much space - just something cross platform.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    Works just fine for windows and mac. I know of that shit storm when they neutered the linux app. I think you're referring to this fiasco? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856209
    - _visgean 6y ago
      It also works on Linux. Specifically on ext4.
  - enitihas 6y ago
    They started supporting other file systems again though.
Barrin92 6y ago
> As it stands now, they could still target consumers with a higher end offering what I don't get is why they don't have a price plan in the 100-200GB range like google drive has for two or three bucks. I've set up like seven or eight of those for family members and relatives, it's a very good price point and size for the average user. The free plan of dropbox pretty much is super small and the next thing is 5TB.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  The theory is it would cannibalize their $10/mo plan. They have a lot of users who don’t have tons of files but value paid features. Google and Apple’s storage services are plainer offerings.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    I'm on Google Drive mainly because they dpn't offer such a plan. Dropboxes client is better, but I'm not paying an extra $8/month for storage I don't need.
    - 1123581321 6y ago
      You are on Google Drive because you don’t need what Dropbox does. That’s not something they should worry about. They would need at least five of you for every $10/mo customer who downgraded to improve their situation, not factoring things like increased support cost and higher churn rates from lowest-price shoppers.
OriginalPenguin 6y ago
Unless Amazon decided that they want to give DropBox a huge discounted rate for the PR, it would simply cost too much to have stayed on the Amazon cloud.

fermienrico 6y ago

I love Dropbox as a product and happily pay for it. It always works. No fuss. No conflicts, it just works. Something to be said about tools you forget that you’re even paying for, they silently make your life better. Lately, they’re getting slightly annoying though. Designers at Dropbox - it’s a fucking file syncing tool, not a life philosophy. Get over the garish design non sense and allow Guido(retired)...ehhh engineers to do their thing. The problem is the shareholders. Dropbox doesn’t need to grow. It can stay the same and continue to be helpful (and make money, provide a living to many employees). But the goddamn shareholders will ruin a perfectly good product. Public companies get hollowed out and the marrow sucked by the shareholders. I want a Drew Houston & Sons Co.; not Dropbox Incorporated.

pm90 6y ago
Small nit: Guido left Dropbox in 2019, he is now retired.
trimbo 6y ago
> allow Guido to do his thing Guido van Rossum? He retired. https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/thank-you--guido https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/thank-you--guido
gumby 6y ago
> Get over the garish design non sense and allow Guido to do his thing. Guido retired last November.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Oh great. Good for Guido.
xmodem 6y ago
In today’s SV mantra, standing still means falling behind, and waiting until you either get disrupted by other startups, copied by big tech, or both. No, something must be done, and trying to force themselves deeper into their customers’ workflows is something. So they did it.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  I think standing still with 500 million users in my book is standing way the hell up there. Boosted into space at this point. Why shy away from competition? Should face it.
kerneltime 6y ago
Smugmug.. I love those guys..
nvarsj 6y ago
> No fuss. No conflicts, it just works. I felt the same until they stopped supporting most Linux filesystems bizarrely - forcing me to reimage multiple machines. Despite years of perfect behaviour on non-ext4. I also think the price is very high for what I get. Only reason I haven’t swapped to something else is my life is locked into it from the early days. I’d love to drop it at this point. I don’t even need that much space - just something cross platform.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Works just fine for windows and mac. I know of that shit storm when they neutered the linux app. I think you're referring to this fiasco? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17856209
  - _visgean 6y ago
    It also works on Linux. Specifically on ext4.
- enitihas 6y ago
  They started supporting other file systems again though.

Barrin92 6y ago

> As it stands now, they could still target consumers with a higher end offering what I don't get is why they don't have a price plan in the 100-200GB range like google drive has for two or three bucks. I've set up like seven or eight of those for family members and relatives, it's a very good price point and size for the average user. The free plan of dropbox pretty much is super small and the next thing is 5TB.

1123581321 6y ago
The theory is it would cannibalize their $10/mo plan. They have a lot of users who don’t have tons of files but value paid features. Google and Apple’s storage services are plainer offerings.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  I'm on Google Drive mainly because they dpn't offer such a plan. Dropboxes client is better, but I'm not paying an extra $8/month for storage I don't need.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    You are on Google Drive because you don’t need what Dropbox does. That’s not something they should worry about. They would need at least five of you for every $10/mo customer who downgraded to improve their situation, not factoring things like increased support cost and higher churn rates from lowest-price shoppers.

OriginalPenguin 6y ago

Unless Amazon decided that they want to give DropBox a huge discounted rate for the PR, it would simply cost too much to have stayed on the Amazon cloud.