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Dropbox got on to something big early on Early on? Just the opposite. The space was so saturated that new entries into it were considered a cliche joke. http:/

by gruseom 15y ago

Dropbox got on to something big early on Early on? Just the opposite. The space was so saturated that new entries into it were considered a cliche joke. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html The other great example of successful late entry into a saturated space, of course, is Google.

georgemcbay 15y ago
I'm an enthusiastic Live Mesh supporter that has been using Live Mesh from the beginning, so I'm aware that Dropbox (or Mesh for that matter) is not the first way to share files over the Internet, but none of what Joel is talking about in that piece was really both consumer facing and as simple as "run the app and forget about it" back then, so it is basically irrelevant to the value Dropbox (and the current Live Mesh) bring to the table. Claiming the existence of those older services diminishes the value of Dropbox (or current Live Mesh, etc) is like saying that the iPad is no big deal because Fujitsu was making tablet computers almost 20 years ago.
- sprovoost 15y ago
  iPad is most certainly a big deal, but if Apple doesn't keep innovating they won't be half as relevant five years from now when tablets are a commodity. They're already resorting to patents to fight off competition. Dropbox's simplicity is it's own undoing in the long run; it's too easy to commoditize. They'll be forced to lower their price to the cost of storage and that's when Apple and Microsoft will just subsidize their own offerings and kill them, unless a regulator notices it on time. Google is not a good counter example; it seems simple to the user, but as Bing has shown, it's very hard to replicate. Dropbox on the other hand is trivial to clone. Any IPO event would just increase the likeliness of big companies noticing and putting some effort into it.
seminal 15y ago
Facebook too. Can't think of many recent instances where the winner of the early adopters won the space. Netflix?
- tedunangst 15y ago
  RedHat appears to have won the overpriced linux distro space. Amazon. People think of gmail as a late winner, but the numbers aren't quite there.

by gruseom 15y ago

georgemcbay 15y ago

I'm an enthusiastic Live Mesh supporter that has been using Live Mesh from the beginning, so I'm aware that Dropbox (or Mesh for that matter) is not the first way to share files over the Internet, but none of what Joel is talking about in that piece was really both consumer facing and as simple as "run the app and forget about it" back then, so it is basically irrelevant to the value Dropbox (and the current Live Mesh) bring to the table. Claiming the existence of those older services diminishes the value of Dropbox (or current Live Mesh, etc) is like saying that the iPad is no big deal because Fujitsu was making tablet computers almost 20 years ago.

sprovoost 15y ago
iPad is most certainly a big deal, but if Apple doesn't keep innovating they won't be half as relevant five years from now when tablets are a commodity. They're already resorting to patents to fight off competition. Dropbox's simplicity is it's own undoing in the long run; it's too easy to commoditize. They'll be forced to lower their price to the cost of storage and that's when Apple and Microsoft will just subsidize their own offerings and kill them, unless a regulator notices it on time. Google is not a good counter example; it seems simple to the user, but as Bing has shown, it's very hard to replicate. Dropbox on the other hand is trivial to clone. Any IPO event would just increase the likeliness of big companies noticing and putting some effort into it.

seminal 15y ago

Facebook too. Can't think of many recent instances where the winner of the early adopters won the space. Netflix?

tedunangst 15y ago
RedHat appears to have won the overpriced linux distro space. Amazon. People think of gmail as a late winner, but the numbers aren't quite there.