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It's dismaying that even the best, most shining examples of unicorns that took off on the backs of good products and have stood toe-to-toe with the mega-corps,

It's dismaying that even the best, most shining examples of unicorns that took off on the backs of good products and have stood toe-to-toe with the mega-corps, are now losing value simply because they're competing with the mega-corps, and being forced to look for acquisitions just like all the other startups. If that doesn't plainly show that big tech has gotten too big, I don't know what will.

aNoob7000 6y ago
For me it was the lack of storage tiers. When the only options is to get 1TB or more, I think you lost a lot of users. Additionally, they should have figured out a way to share storage with a family, if the only profitable storage tiers are 1TB or more then let people share it.
- brundolf 6y ago
  Meh, we're talking a single-digit increase in price to go from the previous-lowest tier to the current-lowest 2TB tier. I only use a tiny fraction of it, but it's still a good value. The family thing makes sense - I don't have a family I would share with so it's never come up - though couldn't you just sign into the same account on multiple devices?
  - raiyu 6y ago
    Signing into the same account on multiple devices creates security and ownership issues, much better to be able to delegate permissions and also keep ownership clearly understood.
    - brundolf 6y ago
      Is that really a concern within a household? Give each person a top-level directory
      - raiyu 6y ago
        Wait till some siblings get pissed off at each other and start deleting important files that the other one cares about =]
        brundolf 6y ago
        Guess I'm revealing my ignorance about what it's like to have kids :)
      - dharmab 6y ago
        I can tell you don't have any horny teenagers in your household :)
  - apple4ever 6y ago
    Its a huge jump from $0 to $12 a month!
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    Well for my needs the Dropbox plan costs 10 times more than the Google or iCloud plan. Because I need 50GB, not 2000.
- jrgoff 6y ago
  They do now have a family plan: https://www.dropbox.com/family https://www.dropbox.com/family
raiyu 6y ago
That's certainly one perspective, the other is that in the consumer segment churn is high but also the are a tremendous amount of people. Dropbox had a head start but over time other companies like Google where able to build out competing services and because the total population of potential consumers continued to increase, a lead today, doesn't guarantee a lead tomorrow. The other side of is that what made Dropbox amazing at the beginning, the ability to sync files with direct access on your computer, is actually now a detriment. Many users don't want the files locally, download speeds have increased dramatically (I have 1Gbps fiber at my apartment), so having the files locally is actually annoying and takes up diskspace, so you have a bit of a late mover advantage, especially if the population of available consumers continues to increase. In this case it isn't simply X couldn't compete with big Tech, the landscape did shift a bit. It's also important to note that Dropbox is still a very successful company, and if they aren't chasing revenue growth and profit they still provide a great service to consumers. But their growth chasing leads to a degraded user experience, which also pushes people away from their product and has them explore alternatives to really see if it's an apples to apples comparison. And that's where the "cloud" first storage solutions today present a better platform. What really slows this down is the cost of switching for older customers that have a tremendous amount of data already in Dropbox and have it integrated into their workflows so it really isn't a fun project to migrate off. This is also where the price increases create revenue growth because customers aren't willing to go through the pain of migration, but you aren't delivering more value to them, instead you are playing off of the cost switching to drive revenue growth and that begins a downward trajectory.
- brundolf 6y ago
  > The other side of is that what made Dropbox amazing at the beginning, the ability to sync files with direct access on your computer, is actually now a detriment I disagree; file syncing is still exactly what I want. Disk space has gotten exponentially cheaper over the years, and at the same time the amount of bulk media that people store as personal files has been dramatically cut down thanks to streaming services for music and video. I don't mind at all having my entire Dropbox mirrored across my devices; it holds basically every local file I care about, and having a local copy also gives me some peace of mind in case I ever get locked out of my account or something (which Google in particular has become notorious for). You can also, now, select subdirectories that you want to exclude from the current device. At the same time, having it in the cloud means I don't have to worry if my hard drive dies. Any file that I've thoughtlessly kept there while working on it is safe by default. Maybe the story would be different if I ever created classical "documents" and could benefit from Office 365 or Google Docs, but I don't, and so having a cloud-first storage "drive" that primarily holds things which integrate with that particular cloud service isn't very useful to me. > But their growth chasing leads to a degraded user experience You're right that parts of the product have gotten distracted/annoying by trying to build out new differentiators. But the core product (file syncing and backup) still works much better than competitors, and it's not hard to simply ignore the new stuff. Also, perhaps most importantly: I use products from multiple tech giants, and all three major operating systems, and I specifically don't want my cloud storage to only integrate well with one of them. I want it to work equally well across everything. And Dropbox does, at least compared with the competition.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
It's never easy to say conclusively why a stock goes up or down. But do we really need this megacorp explanation? Dropbox could be losing value because they've been trying to make money for a loooooong time and still aren't.
pjc50 6y ago
Historically there has been an argument in economics over whether markets necessarily tend towards consolidation, and I'm inclined to agree with Stiglitz that they do: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/joseph-stiglitz-are-markets-efficient-or-do-they-tend-towards-monopoly-the-verdict-is-in/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/joseph-stiglitz-are-m... Especially in markets with strong network effects. Barring government action, operating systems / platforms will necessarily either directly subsume their most profitable applications, or capture all the market "rent" from them. Ultimately "network shared storage" is a feature rather than a product. For much of their history they were value-added resellers of AWS.
- brundolf 6y ago
  I agree completely. I think history (at least, the past 150 years) has shown this clearly. I've come to see an economy of corporations as a stew that tends to "clump up" and needs to be periodically "stirred" as part of the natural course of its development.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    It's cyclic between consolidation and new investments. We're just ramping up into the consolidation period now.
tw04 6y ago
I disagree, mega-corps aren't the problem. As Steve Jobs famously said: they're a feature, not a product. Even if you eliminate Microsoft, Google, AND Amazon from the discussion, the list of alternatives is endless. Synology and QNAP both have a "free" sync and share client. WD, Seagate, Samsung, Apple, not to mention the open-source options out there. Do the big 3 put MORE pressure on Dropbox, sure. But they never pivoted. Just look at a company like Druva - we used them forever ago as a file sync and share, and now they look very, very different. Dropbox's problem isn't mega-corps or "big tech getting too big", it's that they didn't or couldn't innovate beyond their core product.
- emptyparadise 6y ago
  Why can't a good feature survive on the market?
  - dharmab 6y ago
    One reason is that there's friction with purchasing. If a company already buys Active Directory and O365, it's much easier to get OneDrive added on than it is to set up a new vendor like Dropbox.
  - snarkypixel 6y ago
    Because it can be copied and doesn't have a defendable business model. For most people, consolidating many services into one is just more convenient, even if it means using a "good-enough" version of that feature.
    - onepointsixC 6y ago
      How is that meaningfully different than a product which can be copied?
  - alecbz 6y ago
    I think features are often products for other companies, not for end-users. E.g., digital displays are a "feature, not a product". End-users get value out of digital displays on their thermostats, microwaves, etc., but no end-user buys a digital display themselves, thermostat and microwave manufactures buy them. I think the problem with Dropbox is that it's become too easy for product companies to build data syncing themselves.
rplnt 6y ago
Company can exist and provide good services even without being overvalued on a stock market. If there's anything dismaying it's to see how investors can kill good products because they want more.
avs733 6y ago
>If that doesn't plainly show that big tech has gotten too big, I don't know what will. Or...it could be free markets don't work? Why blame big tech when this same cycle has proven itself out over way too many historical economic eras.
rchaud 6y ago
An alternative interpretation might be that a company that just makes one thing may not survive as a publicly traded entity considering the scrutiny and industry comparisons that entails. GSuite and Office 365 do not trade as standalone companies, but even if they did, they'd be far ahead of Dropbox, as they integrate cloud storage with an entire suite of office products.
karmasimida 6y ago
Market is simple and effective. Shining examples of unicorns? Then they need to prove they can indeed exist in real world. They shouldn't be treated differently.

aNoob7000 6y ago

For me it was the lack of storage tiers. When the only options is to get 1TB or more, I think you lost a lot of users. Additionally, they should have figured out a way to share storage with a family, if the only profitable storage tiers are 1TB or more then let people share it.

brundolf 6y ago
Meh, we're talking a single-digit increase in price to go from the previous-lowest tier to the current-lowest 2TB tier. I only use a tiny fraction of it, but it's still a good value. The family thing makes sense - I don't have a family I would share with so it's never come up - though couldn't you just sign into the same account on multiple devices?
- raiyu 6y ago
  Signing into the same account on multiple devices creates security and ownership issues, much better to be able to delegate permissions and also keep ownership clearly understood.
  - brundolf 6y ago
    Is that really a concern within a household? Give each person a top-level directory
    - raiyu 6y ago
      Wait till some siblings get pissed off at each other and start deleting important files that the other one cares about =]
      - brundolf 6y ago
        Guess I'm revealing my ignorance about what it's like to have kids :)
    - dharmab 6y ago
      I can tell you don't have any horny teenagers in your household :)
- apple4ever 6y ago
  Its a huge jump from $0 to $12 a month!
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  Well for my needs the Dropbox plan costs 10 times more than the Google or iCloud plan. Because I need 50GB, not 2000.
jrgoff 6y ago
They do now have a family plan: https://www.dropbox.com/family https://www.dropbox.com/family

raiyu 6y ago

That's certainly one perspective, the other is that in the consumer segment churn is high but also the are a tremendous amount of people. Dropbox had a head start but over time other companies like Google where able to build out competing services and because the total population of potential consumers continued to increase, a lead today, doesn't guarantee a lead tomorrow. The other side of is that what made Dropbox amazing at the beginning, the ability to sync files with direct access on your computer, is actually now a detriment. Many users don't want the files locally, download speeds have increased dramatically (I have 1Gbps fiber at my apartment), so having the files locally is actually annoying and takes up diskspace, so you have a bit of a late mover advantage, especially if the population of available consumers continues to increase. In this case it isn't simply X couldn't compete with big Tech, the landscape did shift a bit. It's also important to note that Dropbox is still a very successful company, and if they aren't chasing revenue growth and profit they still provide a great service to consumers. But their growth chasing leads to a degraded user experience, which also pushes people away from their product and has them explore alternatives to really see if it's an apples to apples comparison. And that's where the "cloud" first storage solutions today present a better platform. What really slows this down is the cost of switching for older customers that have a tremendous amount of data already in Dropbox and have it integrated into their workflows so it really isn't a fun project to migrate off. This is also where the price increases create revenue growth because customers aren't willing to go through the pain of migration, but you aren't delivering more value to them, instead you are playing off of the cost switching to drive revenue growth and that begins a downward trajectory.

brundolf 6y ago
> The other side of is that what made Dropbox amazing at the beginning, the ability to sync files with direct access on your computer, is actually now a detriment I disagree; file syncing is still exactly what I want. Disk space has gotten exponentially cheaper over the years, and at the same time the amount of bulk media that people store as personal files has been dramatically cut down thanks to streaming services for music and video. I don't mind at all having my entire Dropbox mirrored across my devices; it holds basically every local file I care about, and having a local copy also gives me some peace of mind in case I ever get locked out of my account or something (which Google in particular has become notorious for). You can also, now, select subdirectories that you want to exclude from the current device. At the same time, having it in the cloud means I don't have to worry if my hard drive dies. Any file that I've thoughtlessly kept there while working on it is safe by default. Maybe the story would be different if I ever created classical "documents" and could benefit from Office 365 or Google Docs, but I don't, and so having a cloud-first storage "drive" that primarily holds things which integrate with that particular cloud service isn't very useful to me. > But their growth chasing leads to a degraded user experience You're right that parts of the product have gotten distracted/annoying by trying to build out new differentiators. But the core product (file syncing and backup) still works much better than competitors, and it's not hard to simply ignore the new stuff. Also, perhaps most importantly: I use products from multiple tech giants, and all three major operating systems, and I specifically don't want my cloud storage to only integrate well with one of them. I want it to work equally well across everything. And Dropbox does, at least compared with the competition.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

It's never easy to say conclusively why a stock goes up or down. But do we really need this megacorp explanation? Dropbox could be losing value because they've been trying to make money for a loooooong time and still aren't.

pjc50 6y ago

Historically there has been an argument in economics over whether markets necessarily tend towards consolidation, and I'm inclined to agree with Stiglitz that they do: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/joseph-stiglitz-are-markets-efficient-or-do-they-tend-towards-monopoly-the-verdict-is-in/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/joseph-stiglitz-are-m... Especially in markets with strong network effects. Barring government action, operating systems / platforms will necessarily either directly subsume their most profitable applications, or capture all the market "rent" from them. Ultimately "network shared storage" is a feature rather than a product. For much of their history they were value-added resellers of AWS.

brundolf 6y ago
I agree completely. I think history (at least, the past 150 years) has shown this clearly. I've come to see an economy of corporations as a stew that tends to "clump up" and needs to be periodically "stirred" as part of the natural course of its development.
- busterarm 6y ago
  It's cyclic between consolidation and new investments. We're just ramping up into the consolidation period now.

tw04 6y ago

I disagree, mega-corps aren't the problem. As Steve Jobs famously said: they're a feature, not a product. Even if you eliminate Microsoft, Google, AND Amazon from the discussion, the list of alternatives is endless. Synology and QNAP both have a "free" sync and share client. WD, Seagate, Samsung, Apple, not to mention the open-source options out there. Do the big 3 put MORE pressure on Dropbox, sure. But they never pivoted. Just look at a company like Druva - we used them forever ago as a file sync and share, and now they look very, very different. Dropbox's problem isn't mega-corps or "big tech getting too big", it's that they didn't or couldn't innovate beyond their core product.

emptyparadise 6y ago
Why can't a good feature survive on the market?
- dharmab 6y ago
  One reason is that there's friction with purchasing. If a company already buys Active Directory and O365, it's much easier to get OneDrive added on than it is to set up a new vendor like Dropbox.
- snarkypixel 6y ago
  Because it can be copied and doesn't have a defendable business model. For most people, consolidating many services into one is just more convenient, even if it means using a "good-enough" version of that feature.
  - onepointsixC 6y ago
    How is that meaningfully different than a product which can be copied?
- alecbz 6y ago
  I think features are often products for other companies, not for end-users. E.g., digital displays are a "feature, not a product". End-users get value out of digital displays on their thermostats, microwaves, etc., but no end-user buys a digital display themselves, thermostat and microwave manufactures buy them. I think the problem with Dropbox is that it's become too easy for product companies to build data syncing themselves.

rplnt 6y ago

Company can exist and provide good services even without being overvalued on a stock market. If there's anything dismaying it's to see how investors can kill good products because they want more.

avs733 6y ago

>If that doesn't plainly show that big tech has gotten too big, I don't know what will. Or...it could be free markets don't work? Why blame big tech when this same cycle has proven itself out over way too many historical economic eras.

rchaud 6y ago

An alternative interpretation might be that a company that just makes one thing may not survive as a publicly traded entity considering the scrutiny and industry comparisons that entails. GSuite and Office 365 do not trade as standalone companies, but even if they did, they'd be far ahead of Dropbox, as they integrate cloud storage with an entire suite of office products.

karmasimida 6y ago

Market is simple and effective. Shining examples of unicorns? Then they need to prove they can indeed exist in real world. They shouldn't be treated differently.