7 ms·

What does that mean? Can you explain?

by Issaclabs 5y ago

Operyl 5y ago
This comment trivializing Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- pooper 5y ago
  I for one do not think the comments trivialized anything. I see these as inevitable questions that a leader like Drew Houston should be prepared to answer at some point. Think of it this way, would you disqualify me if you were hiring and I asked a similar question at the interview? I think the underlying actual question for Dropbox to ponder (but perhaps not answer publicly) was "what is your moat?" without the business development language and at least for me that remains an open question. I remember I was in college when Dropbox started and I thought Dropbox was silly to offer more storage for inviting more users. It was easy to approach people and ask them to try something in college. I think I almost maxed out my invites. I remember feeling I was taking Dropbox to the cleaners... One activity question for HN: why do you think Dropbox continues to exist today while copycats like Barracuda Copy have failed?
  - sgbeal 5y ago
    > One activity question for HN: why do you think Dropbox continues to exist today while copycats like Barracuda Copy have failed? FWIW, i've been using Dropbox since practically the day they went online, and have been a subscriber for all but the first few months of that time. They've never once failed me, never been offline when i needed them, never lost anything, they created a Linux sync client out of the box (whereas Google first claimed the would make GDrive for Linux but never did), and it's easy to manage via multiple interfaces (mainly their own web UI and https://rclone.org https://rclone.org, which can proxy your dropbox behind an add-hoc FTP server running in your LAN). They're extremely pricey compared to the same storage in GDrive, but Dropbox has never let me down so i'm in no hurry to drop them.
- belter 5y ago
  That comment is unfairly judged, taking into account how much they used AWS instead of their own solution. "...Half-a-billion people stored files on Dropbox. Well, sort of. Really, the files were in Amazon’s cloud. .." [1] [1] "The Epic Story of Dropbox's Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire" https://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-amazon-cloud-empire/ https://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-ama...
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Why can't a company use cloud? It's not like there's Amazonbox client I could install now and get the same service. Dropbox never was about the storage itself, IMHO - it was about the ease of usage. There were enough options to get storage - cloud or non-cloud - when it came out, but none of them had the easy folder-based sync and sharing (public folder) of Dropbox.
    - belter 5y ago
      It's not if the company uses cloud or not. It's if they are solving the hard problems or instead, outsourcing the technical challenges to their cloud provider while charging the user a non justifiable premium for the intuitive user interface :-) So it's about the eventual value add and the business case. The challenging part is to provide the back-end. Get massive storage, with proper checksum integrity, at a cost effective value and with flawless security. A single command (and minor variations around it): aws s3 sync <name_source_dir> s3://<name_target_bucket> get's you all that. It can be easily mapped to an intuitive user interface by a software development boutique in weeks. And because that is the difficult part, it seems for the first 8 years of their history that was solved for them by AWS, according to their own reported history. Sharing a folder or file from Dropbox is no more intuitive than using the S3 console. Looking at the very colorful history of security issues around Dropbox [1] it's certainly not safer. So why would a user pay more for storage costs than with a cloud provider, with notoriously less security? Does a tiny layer on top one or more cloud providers justify the add-on value for the user or the current valuation of 9 Billion dollars? [1] "Criticism of Dropbox": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Dropbox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Dropbox

What does that mean? Can you explain?

Operyl 5y ago

This comment trivializing Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

pooper 5y ago
I for one do not think the comments trivialized anything. I see these as inevitable questions that a leader like Drew Houston should be prepared to answer at some point. Think of it this way, would you disqualify me if you were hiring and I asked a similar question at the interview? I think the underlying actual question for Dropbox to ponder (but perhaps not answer publicly) was "what is your moat?" without the business development language and at least for me that remains an open question. I remember I was in college when Dropbox started and I thought Dropbox was silly to offer more storage for inviting more users. It was easy to approach people and ask them to try something in college. I think I almost maxed out my invites. I remember feeling I was taking Dropbox to the cleaners... One activity question for HN: why do you think Dropbox continues to exist today while copycats like Barracuda Copy have failed?
- sgbeal 5y ago
  > One activity question for HN: why do you think Dropbox continues to exist today while copycats like Barracuda Copy have failed? FWIW, i've been using Dropbox since practically the day they went online, and have been a subscriber for all but the first few months of that time. They've never once failed me, never been offline when i needed them, never lost anything, they created a Linux sync client out of the box (whereas Google first claimed the would make GDrive for Linux but never did), and it's easy to manage via multiple interfaces (mainly their own web UI and https://rclone.org https://rclone.org, which can proxy your dropbox behind an add-hoc FTP server running in your LAN). They're extremely pricey compared to the same storage in GDrive, but Dropbox has never let me down so i'm in no hurry to drop them.
belter 5y ago
That comment is unfairly judged, taking into account how much they used AWS instead of their own solution. "...Half-a-billion people stored files on Dropbox. Well, sort of. Really, the files were in Amazon’s cloud. .." [1] [1] "The Epic Story of Dropbox's Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire" https://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-amazon-cloud-empire/ https://www.wired.com/2016/03/epic-story-dropboxs-exodus-ama...
- emteycz 5y ago
  Why can't a company use cloud? It's not like there's Amazonbox client I could install now and get the same service. Dropbox never was about the storage itself, IMHO - it was about the ease of usage. There were enough options to get storage - cloud or non-cloud - when it came out, but none of them had the easy folder-based sync and sharing (public folder) of Dropbox.
  - belter 5y ago
    It's not if the company uses cloud or not. It's if they are solving the hard problems or instead, outsourcing the technical challenges to their cloud provider while charging the user a non justifiable premium for the intuitive user interface :-) So it's about the eventual value add and the business case. The challenging part is to provide the back-end. Get massive storage, with proper checksum integrity, at a cost effective value and with flawless security. A single command (and minor variations around it): aws s3 sync <name_source_dir> s3://<name_target_bucket> get's you all that. It can be easily mapped to an intuitive user interface by a software development boutique in weeks. And because that is the difficult part, it seems for the first 8 years of their history that was solved for them by AWS, according to their own reported history. Sharing a folder or file from Dropbox is no more intuitive than using the S3 console. Looking at the very colorful history of security issues around Dropbox [1] it's certainly not safer. So why would a user pay more for storage costs than with a cloud provider, with notoriously less security? Does a tiny layer on top one or more cloud providers justify the add-on value for the user or the current valuation of 9 Billion dollars? [1] "Criticism of Dropbox": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Dropbox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Dropbox