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Dropbox feels more bearucratic internally than Google, a company two orders of magnitude its size. I feel like it is a perfect case of all the “VC-style” advic

Dropbox feels more bearucratic internally than Google, a company two orders of magnitude its size. I feel like it is a perfect case of all the “VC-style” advice of “CEO job changes every 6 months and you should adapt” going haywire; mistaking the focus to be building an abstract hierarchical HR org, while completely losing the ability, vision, or desire to build a product that people love. Reminds me of Steve Jobs’ quote on monopoly businesses, except it happened before they got a proper monopoly. https://youtu.be/lmFlOd0MGZg https://youtu.be/lmFlOd0MGZg In fact, the early success may have been a curse there, thinking they have the genie in the bottle when they really had not.

tim_sw 6y ago
In what ways is it bureaucratic? Is there a lot of process to get things done across teams or to ship new features?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
throwawaypop 6y ago
I think people just wanted a cloud solution to store and retrive files. Dropbox was one of the products that grew during the PC and digital wave. Then came "Google Drive" and nobody turned back to Dropbox after that.
- aheilbut 6y ago
  Google Drive is a confusing mess, and still doesn’t work on linux.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    Maybe not with the official tools, but it works great with rclone [1]. Which to me is far superior to any official tool but hey, to each their own. 1- https://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/
    - villedepommes 6y ago
      second that! rclone is an amazing piece of software! With a few simple bash scripts and rclone, my google drive serves code snippets (albeit without code highlighting) and screenshots! there are also armhf and aarch64 builds of rclone!
- mullingitover 6y ago
  > Then came "Google Drive" and nobody turned back to Dropbox after that. I wish it were true, but neither Google nor Apple have the most basic, brain-dead feature: "Give me a link that I can give anyone, and they can download the thing without jumping through any hoops." They both require people receiving a file to jump through the hoop of having accounts with them in order to do this most basic action. It's the reason I'm still regrettably paying Dropbox. Anything calling itself a cloud drive should have basic feature where you can send anyone a link and they can download the file with no other requirement than an internet-connected browser.
  - ImTheMaddest 6y ago
    Google Drive has this feature, right click the file > get shareable link > Anyone on the Internet with this link can view
    - Stratoscope 6y ago
      OneDrive too, for either a file or a folder, with approximately the same UI (right click and select Share). Works on desktop, mobile, and web.
    - mullingitover 6y ago
      I stand corrected! Time to cancel that dropbox subscription.
  - ByteJockey 6y ago
    I've defaulted to making s3 buckets public for that. Admittedly, the s3 console isn't the easiest thing to navigate if you aren't used to it, but I don't really need to do it very often.
    - beamatronic 6y ago
      Use Cyberduck or Filezilla instead?
      - 6y ago
- Tagbert 6y ago
  The Google drive sync engine is a piece of slow buggy crap. Dropbox is rock solid. No comparison.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  The UX for google drive is awful, especially on OSX.
pjmlp 6y ago
Except there isn't any jurisdiction where Apple has a proper monopoly.
- harpratap 6y ago
  In Japan you can be investigated by Antitrust and there's no proper definition of monopoly there. The only criteria is "superior bargaining position" which anyone can agree Apple does have today - https://globalcompetitionreview.com/jurisdiction/1006143/japan https://globalcompetitionreview.com/jurisdiction/1006143/jap... > For Party A to have superior bargaining position over the other party (Party B), Party A does not need to have a market-dominant position nor an absolutely dominant bargaining position equivalent thereto, but only needs to have a relatively superior bargaining position as compared to the other transacting party. When Party A has superior bargaining position over Party B, who is a transaction counterpart, it means such a case where if Party A makes a request, etc, that is substantially disadvantageous for Party B, Party B would be unable to avoid accepting such a request, etc, on the grounds that Party B has difficulty in continuing the transaction with Party A and thereby Party B’s business management would be substantially impeded.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    First of all it would only apply within Japan law, it would need to take into account how Apple market practices relate to other players on the Japanese market and only the opinion of a judge actually matters. Secondly, it doesn't scale, because Android and Windows own the worldwide market share of consumer platforms.

tim_sw 6y ago

In what ways is it bureaucratic? Is there a lot of process to get things done across teams or to ship new features?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

throwawaypop 6y ago

I think people just wanted a cloud solution to store and retrive files. Dropbox was one of the products that grew during the PC and digital wave. Then came "Google Drive" and nobody turned back to Dropbox after that.

aheilbut 6y ago
Google Drive is a confusing mess, and still doesn’t work on linux.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  Maybe not with the official tools, but it works great with rclone [1]. Which to me is far superior to any official tool but hey, to each their own. 1- https://rclone.org/ https://rclone.org/
  - villedepommes 6y ago
    second that! rclone is an amazing piece of software! With a few simple bash scripts and rclone, my google drive serves code snippets (albeit without code highlighting) and screenshots! there are also armhf and aarch64 builds of rclone!
mullingitover 6y ago
> Then came "Google Drive" and nobody turned back to Dropbox after that. I wish it were true, but neither Google nor Apple have the most basic, brain-dead feature: "Give me a link that I can give anyone, and they can download the thing without jumping through any hoops." They both require people receiving a file to jump through the hoop of having accounts with them in order to do this most basic action. It's the reason I'm still regrettably paying Dropbox. Anything calling itself a cloud drive should have basic feature where you can send anyone a link and they can download the file with no other requirement than an internet-connected browser.
- ImTheMaddest 6y ago
  Google Drive has this feature, right click the file > get shareable link > Anyone on the Internet with this link can view
  - Stratoscope 6y ago
    OneDrive too, for either a file or a folder, with approximately the same UI (right click and select Share). Works on desktop, mobile, and web.
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    I stand corrected! Time to cancel that dropbox subscription.
- ByteJockey 6y ago
  I've defaulted to making s3 buckets public for that. Admittedly, the s3 console isn't the easiest thing to navigate if you aren't used to it, but I don't really need to do it very often.
  - beamatronic 6y ago
    Use Cyberduck or Filezilla instead?
    - 6y ago
Tagbert 6y ago
The Google drive sync engine is a piece of slow buggy crap. Dropbox is rock solid. No comparison.
ashtonkem 6y ago
The UX for google drive is awful, especially on OSX.

pjmlp 6y ago

Except there isn't any jurisdiction where Apple has a proper monopoly.

harpratap 6y ago
In Japan you can be investigated by Antitrust and there's no proper definition of monopoly there. The only criteria is "superior bargaining position" which anyone can agree Apple does have today - https://globalcompetitionreview.com/jurisdiction/1006143/japan https://globalcompetitionreview.com/jurisdiction/1006143/jap... > For Party A to have superior bargaining position over the other party (Party B), Party A does not need to have a market-dominant position nor an absolutely dominant bargaining position equivalent thereto, but only needs to have a relatively superior bargaining position as compared to the other transacting party. When Party A has superior bargaining position over Party B, who is a transaction counterpart, it means such a case where if Party A makes a request, etc, that is substantially disadvantageous for Party B, Party B would be unable to avoid accepting such a request, etc, on the grounds that Party B has difficulty in continuing the transaction with Party A and thereby Party B’s business management would be substantially impeded.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  First of all it would only apply within Japan law, it would need to take into account how Apple market practices relate to other players on the Japanese market and only the opinion of a judge actually matters. Secondly, it doesn't scale, because Android and Windows own the worldwide market share of consumer platforms.