3 ms·

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

by 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.
busterarm 6y ago
> I disagree, mega-corps aren't the problem. As Steve Jobs famously said: they're a feature, not a product. I almost kneejerk downvoted out of disagreement. Mega-corps are _a_ problem, but not the problem here, which you astutely pointed out. Dropbox didn't/couldn't innovate beyond their core product is clearly the issue here. Additionally, most of what I find that companies use Dropbox for equates to Shadow IT. Something that mature corporations ruthlessly eliminate.
- brundolf 6y ago
  The thing is that I (and many people) still want exactly the core product that Dropbox offers (and does better than anyone else), even if that's a smaller market than it was ten years ago. It makes sense that businesses would want to get all of their IT solutions from a single integrated company for simplicity's sake, and it makes sense that consumers don't mess with actual files as much as they used to. But for my own purposes I actually wish Dropbox would stop trying to move beyond their core product. And even though the market of people like me has shrunk, I don't think it will ever go away completely.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    Perhaps your storage needs are low, but I feel like at this point once you're past 4-5TB, a Synology or QNAP NAS is a no-brainer for anyone even remotely technical. I need quite a lot of storage for my projects and am up to a 42TB Enterprise NAS at home w/ Fujitsu helium-filled drives. Probably more than Dropbox customers would ever want to spend, but well worth it for me. Even if I didn't need as much storage, I'm pretty sure I would use the same product. Access from all of my devices is easy as they're all on one VPN, including my phones.
    - brundolf 6y ago
      I only use about 70GB right now; 2TB is as much as I could imagine ever needing. That 70GB includes a modest collection of music from before the streaming era, a few videos, backups of old documents, Blender projects, Unity projects, a backup of all my photos from my phone (from the past few years), a couple archives of family photos (from the past few decades). I also back up product licenses and shell profiles there, for easy setup of new machines (which I highly recommend). The only important files that don't go in my Dropbox are my actual code projects, since those live on GitHub. I use a whole lot more space than that when it comes to software, of course - Steam games, in particular - but there's no reason to put any of that on Dropbox because it can be trivially re-downloaded. I have 4TB of disk space on my desktop, but nearly everything outside of that 70GB is a glorified cache. I honestly can't fathom how I would utilize 42TB of backed-up data storage, unless I decided to start torrenting. And anyway, a local NAS won't do me much good if the house burns down or gets broken-into. A cloud storage solution that presumably gets replicated across multiple data centers, and also mirrors local copies on all of my devices, is the most durable data storage solution I can imagine.

by tw04 6y ago

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.

busterarm 6y ago

> I disagree, mega-corps aren't the problem. As Steve Jobs famously said: they're a feature, not a product. I almost kneejerk downvoted out of disagreement. Mega-corps are _a_ problem, but not the problem here, which you astutely pointed out. Dropbox didn't/couldn't innovate beyond their core product is clearly the issue here. Additionally, most of what I find that companies use Dropbox for equates to Shadow IT. Something that mature corporations ruthlessly eliminate.

brundolf 6y ago
The thing is that I (and many people) still want exactly the core product that Dropbox offers (and does better than anyone else), even if that's a smaller market than it was ten years ago. It makes sense that businesses would want to get all of their IT solutions from a single integrated company for simplicity's sake, and it makes sense that consumers don't mess with actual files as much as they used to. But for my own purposes I actually wish Dropbox would stop trying to move beyond their core product. And even though the market of people like me has shrunk, I don't think it will ever go away completely.
- busterarm 6y ago
  Perhaps your storage needs are low, but I feel like at this point once you're past 4-5TB, a Synology or QNAP NAS is a no-brainer for anyone even remotely technical. I need quite a lot of storage for my projects and am up to a 42TB Enterprise NAS at home w/ Fujitsu helium-filled drives. Probably more than Dropbox customers would ever want to spend, but well worth it for me. Even if I didn't need as much storage, I'm pretty sure I would use the same product. Access from all of my devices is easy as they're all on one VPN, including my phones.
  - brundolf 6y ago
    I only use about 70GB right now; 2TB is as much as I could imagine ever needing. That 70GB includes a modest collection of music from before the streaming era, a few videos, backups of old documents, Blender projects, Unity projects, a backup of all my photos from my phone (from the past few years), a couple archives of family photos (from the past few decades). I also back up product licenses and shell profiles there, for easy setup of new machines (which I highly recommend). The only important files that don't go in my Dropbox are my actual code projects, since those live on GitHub. I use a whole lot more space than that when it comes to software, of course - Steam games, in particular - but there's no reason to put any of that on Dropbox because it can be trivially re-downloaded. I have 4TB of disk space on my desktop, but nearly everything outside of that 70GB is a glorified cache. I honestly can't fathom how I would utilize 42TB of backed-up data storage, unless I decided to start torrenting. And anyway, a local NAS won't do me much good if the house burns down or gets broken-into. A cloud storage solution that presumably gets replicated across multiple data centers, and also mirrors local copies on all of my devices, is the most durable data storage solution I can imagine.