5 ms·

I was told a story about the Dropbox sales team a while back that swore me off using them. They contacted the company I worked at, that didn't have a business c

by retox 6y ago

I was told a story about the Dropbox sales team a while back that swore me off using them. They contacted the company I worked at, that didn't have a business contract with Dropbox, offering a great deal and a meeting was quickly arranged. The meeting (which I only heard about secondhand from a good friend) quickly turned into a strong-arm operation. Dropbox had 'detected' that employees at our company were using Dropbox and it would be unfortunate if their stored files were no longer available and it would be in our best interest to sign up for a business account or we might legally be in breach of some terms of service. Some detective work later it was determined that people had been signed in to Dropbox from company machines, but there were no accounts opened with a company email and nothing business related was being synced. All Dropbox binaries and network connections have been blocked since.

protomyth 6y ago
Well, the tactic worked for Oracle, and I would assume some of those lawyers landed at other SV companies. Although, to be fair to Oracle, they didn't do dark pattern stuff when I used them.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  The problem for Dropbox is that social media makes these strong arm tactics harder, as the victims have an opportunity to put the company on blast publicly and trash their reputation. 20 years ago companies could do this repeatedly for a longer period of time before they’d gain a reputation for being scummy.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  But then look at how their "cloud" is doing. Is anyone anywhere in SV building new products on top of Oracle?
  - protomyth 6y ago
    Oracle isn't an SV focused company. There is plenty of money in all those non-tech businesses to be a big winner.
Terretta 6y ago
The best answer to this tactic is, “Nice Dropbox you have there. Shame if OneDrive were to happen to it.” The O365 integration with OneDrive is so seamless relative to other options, employees won’t even complain after an initial learning curve. In fact, many will start subscribing to O365 on iOS etc. and start having access to the same content synced across Windows, MacOS, iOS, Xbox, etc. At this point, with employees adapted and the “M365” data visibility and DLP tools switched on, the enterprise can switch off Dropbox or other file depots so even personal accounts won’t work. It takes a year or so to play out, but that’s how you lose 20,000 customers at a time.
- mxuribe 6y ago
  This is an interesting take, and i agree with you. I myself have used dropbox for personal stuff, and onedrive with several of my previous employers for years now. For any person or business that i know who is all-in on microsoft products/services, i recommend to just adopt leveraging oneDrive, and life for them gets easier. (I didn't say better in other ways...but certainly easier.) In fact, oneDrive is good enough that i signed up my family for the o365 family plan, because the cost is hard to beat (and because my family doesn't care if their machine is windows or linux)... But, when i went to start mixing in my files (vs my partner's and rest of family's files)...I learned that onedrive does __NOT RUN NATIVELY ON LINUX__ ...and linux is my personal daily driver. Hence, while my family, and all of our collective and shared files (including family photos) live on a paid oneDrive account, my stuff (files that really only pertain to me like dev. projects, etc.) live in dropbox, because dropbox runs decent enough on my linux machine. I can not wait for the day when dropbox is NOT the only decent option for linux machines. (Caveat: I am a big fan of nextcloud, but they're not there just yet...hopefully soon though!)
  - Topgamer7 6y ago
    I mount onedrive on linux pretty well with rclone. 1. Setup rclone with onedrive (you have to copy an oauth token iirc) 2. Run mount nohup rclone --vfs-cache-mode writes mount onedrive: ~/onedrive &
    - 6y ago
908B64B197 6y ago
> Dropbox had 'detected' that employees at our company were using Dropbox and it would be unfortunate if their stored files were no longer available and it would be in our best interest to sign up for a business account or we might legally be in breach of some terms of service. That's such a dumb sales tactic. Having users inside a company without any contracts with the company means that there are probably evangelists for the product working there but management won't buy. Time to give a free trial of the pro-enterprise-moneymaker version and hope that someone decide it's worth it.

by retox 6y ago

protomyth 6y ago

Well, the tactic worked for Oracle, and I would assume some of those lawyers landed at other SV companies. Although, to be fair to Oracle, they didn't do dark pattern stuff when I used them.

ashtonkem 6y ago
The problem for Dropbox is that social media makes these strong arm tactics harder, as the victims have an opportunity to put the company on blast publicly and trash their reputation. 20 years ago companies could do this repeatedly for a longer period of time before they’d gain a reputation for being scummy.
908B64B197 6y ago
But then look at how their "cloud" is doing. Is anyone anywhere in SV building new products on top of Oracle?
- protomyth 6y ago
  Oracle isn't an SV focused company. There is plenty of money in all those non-tech businesses to be a big winner.

Terretta 6y ago

The best answer to this tactic is, “Nice Dropbox you have there. Shame if OneDrive were to happen to it.” The O365 integration with OneDrive is so seamless relative to other options, employees won’t even complain after an initial learning curve. In fact, many will start subscribing to O365 on iOS etc. and start having access to the same content synced across Windows, MacOS, iOS, Xbox, etc. At this point, with employees adapted and the “M365” data visibility and DLP tools switched on, the enterprise can switch off Dropbox or other file depots so even personal accounts won’t work. It takes a year or so to play out, but that’s how you lose 20,000 customers at a time.

mxuribe 6y ago
This is an interesting take, and i agree with you. I myself have used dropbox for personal stuff, and onedrive with several of my previous employers for years now. For any person or business that i know who is all-in on microsoft products/services, i recommend to just adopt leveraging oneDrive, and life for them gets easier. (I didn't say better in other ways...but certainly easier.) In fact, oneDrive is good enough that i signed up my family for the o365 family plan, because the cost is hard to beat (and because my family doesn't care if their machine is windows or linux)... But, when i went to start mixing in my files (vs my partner's and rest of family's files)...I learned that onedrive does __NOT RUN NATIVELY ON LINUX__ ...and linux is my personal daily driver. Hence, while my family, and all of our collective and shared files (including family photos) live on a paid oneDrive account, my stuff (files that really only pertain to me like dev. projects, etc.) live in dropbox, because dropbox runs decent enough on my linux machine. I can not wait for the day when dropbox is NOT the only decent option for linux machines. (Caveat: I am a big fan of nextcloud, but they're not there just yet...hopefully soon though!)
- Topgamer7 6y ago
  I mount onedrive on linux pretty well with rclone. 1. Setup rclone with onedrive (you have to copy an oauth token iirc) 2. Run mount nohup rclone --vfs-cache-mode writes mount onedrive: ~/onedrive &
  - 6y ago

908B64B197 6y ago

> Dropbox had 'detected' that employees at our company were using Dropbox and it would be unfortunate if their stored files were no longer available and it would be in our best interest to sign up for a business account or we might legally be in breach of some terms of service. That's such a dumb sales tactic. Having users inside a company without any contracts with the company means that there are probably evangelists for the product working there but management won't buy. Time to give a free trial of the pro-enterprise-moneymaker version and hope that someone decide it's worth it.