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Amazon's pricing here is the same as SpiderOak's, and Dropbox has been competing with us in the backup/sync space this whole time. The industry has seen many o

Amazon's pricing here is the same as SpiderOak's, and Dropbox has been competing with us in the backup/sync space this whole time. The industry has seen many of these these simple "cloud drive" products fail. I think the first was Xdrive. They just don't have the local response speed that users expect. I doubt Amazon will fail here, but as it is, this is not much in the way of competition for Dropbox or the rest of the sync industry. It's a different product all together.

travisjeffery 16y ago
Before your comment I don't think I'd heard of Xdrive. People know Amazon, Amazon already has a lot of users, and Amazon knows how to get people to buy things. Odds are someone is going to have an account at Amazon rather than Dropbox, and when they go to the Cloud Drive site they see a massive button to upload files and get going immediately. As compared to Dropbox where the user has to download and install something first, and then go from there. So yeah, I think Dropbox just lost a lot of potential users — sure, they may not have been the type of users who would pay Dropbox at first, but Amazon's service is only going to get better, and they're less likely to grow into a Dropbox paying user.
- steevdave 16y ago
  Entirely possible. Currently I am a dropbox customer and see no benefit in switching to Amazon. The only thing that would make me switch is if they came out with a Linux ARM client. It's the only hardware I have that doesn't have a native client and as more and more ARM devices are coming to market, more people will be wanting that. As a Linux developer, it does feel as if Linux is a third world citizen and the company I work for has offered to do the work for them in porting it to ARM but with no response. If Amazon were to make the ARM client they would definitely see uptake in clients on the devices.
- phlux 16y ago
  Thats because you're too young.... Xdrive was what? '99/'00? THats the funny thing about technology -- there isnt too much that is new -- its just that all the underlying factors for success are more mature, thus products today can succeed where ten years ago they failed. /Lawn

travisjeffery 16y ago

Before your comment I don't think I'd heard of Xdrive. People know Amazon, Amazon already has a lot of users, and Amazon knows how to get people to buy things. Odds are someone is going to have an account at Amazon rather than Dropbox, and when they go to the Cloud Drive site they see a massive button to upload files and get going immediately. As compared to Dropbox where the user has to download and install something first, and then go from there. So yeah, I think Dropbox just lost a lot of potential users — sure, they may not have been the type of users who would pay Dropbox at first, but Amazon's service is only going to get better, and they're less likely to grow into a Dropbox paying user.

steevdave 16y ago
Entirely possible. Currently I am a dropbox customer and see no benefit in switching to Amazon. The only thing that would make me switch is if they came out with a Linux ARM client. It's the only hardware I have that doesn't have a native client and as more and more ARM devices are coming to market, more people will be wanting that. As a Linux developer, it does feel as if Linux is a third world citizen and the company I work for has offered to do the work for them in porting it to ARM but with no response. If Amazon were to make the ARM client they would definitely see uptake in clients on the devices.
phlux 16y ago
Thats because you're too young.... Xdrive was what? '99/'00? THats the funny thing about technology -- there isnt too much that is new -- its just that all the underlying factors for success are more mature, thus products today can succeed where ten years ago they failed. /Lawn