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Ask HN: What's something that HN has been wrong about?
The one example that most folks know about is Dropbox, where pretty much everyone hated on the original post that Drew submitted. And we all know where Dropbox is at now.
What are some other examples of HN hating on an idea and then it turning out to be the next big thing?
- neximo64 4y agoHeres another one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3818055
- wslh 4y agoBut the user posting the comment only has ~3k of karma ;-)
- smoldesu 4y agoWhere is Dropbox now? Last I checked their stock had slid 50% since IPO and they hadn't added major functionality to any of their clients. Most people I know switched to Google Drive, iCloud or selfhosted. Is there any reason, 10 years after release, why I should be using Dropbox instead of my own network attached storage? Or does their product really just boil down to "storage as-a-service, as a service"?
- ndneighbor 4y agoI think your comment does prove that on a long enough time horizon cynicism is the correct disposition to have when it comes to weighing new things. It's on the founder/team to constantly prove that not to be the case. In the case of Dropbox, I would say HN was directionally correct that the software would be commoditized, but I would say that the avg. commenter then would not be able to predict the IPO.
- nscalf 4y agoDropbox is an $8.5b publicly traded company, so it’s in a much better place than an idea that got shot down on the internet and never went anywhere.
- smoldesu 4y agoFair enough. One has to wonder how much of their market share was cannibalized by the likes of Google, Apple and Microsoft though. Dropbox certainly didn't try to distinguish themselves from the pack, and now they're barely on the map. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of middle-schoolers today have never even heard of it.
- nscalf 4y agoYeah, I completely agree with you. It seems like the best path for them would have been something like what slack did. There was a time when Dropbox was a widely used product, that would have been a great time to get acquired and bundled.
- rejectfinite 4y agoThey invented the market that Google Drive and Onedrive took over. There is little need to pay separate for Dropbox now that it is in Google Suite/Workspace and Microsoft Office 365. But for a few years they were the only ones.
- gardenhedge 4y agoI pay for dropbox. You recommend that I should use my own network attached storage? I don't even know what that is or how it works.
- smoldesu 4y agoOk? You do know about iCloud and Google Drive though, and both of those are cheaper-per-gigabyte than Dropbox. If you're still paying for Dropbox in 2023, that's a you-problem.
- gardenhedge 4y agoI don't understand the problem at all.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y agoMaybe /u/gardenhedge prioritizes other features above cost.
- Swenrekcah 4y agoI pay for email and search and I don’t see the problem.
- dilyevsky 4y agoThey’ve been commoditized by box, drive, icloud and everyone under the sun like everyone here predicted. Still a multi-billion company tho so I guess it’s not a bad outcome. For me the lesson here is even if your idea is obvious, if you have first mover advantage and execute well you can still succeed
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y agoSure. I built a webapp that uses Dropbox as a global, read-only storage that is accessed on average just once a day per app instance. At midnight, or at startup, each site synchronizes its local file list with a common dropbox site. Yes, there are many other ways this could have been done, but it was built to be administered by non-technical people who at least understood how to upload files to Dropbox and they have access to all of Dropbox's file management tools. A massive chunk of functionality that we didn't have to build out!
- wruza 4y agothey hadn't added major functionality to any of their clients Stagnating! Seriously, which major functionality you’d want to add to your, idk, snow brush, duct tape, thermometer? Or does their product really just boil down to "storage as-a-service, as a service"? I’m not using cloud storage/sync, but if I did, that would be an exact formula for choosing a product. I mean I’d want to put files in a dir (v-drive?) and that’s it. And when the time comes, Dropbox will be first, because it’s basically synonymous to it, unless price-prohibitive. Am I missing something here? Maybe features you talked about are sharing, social-something, smartphone integration, etc. Genuinely not sure.
- adastra22 4y agoBitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general. I mean think what you want about the industry, but it has definitely been a financial success. Yet HN has had a non-stop hate boner for it since 2010.
- nitwit005 4y agoYou're going to have to define success here. People made a lot of predictions about what the impact of crypto currency or blockchains generally would be. Few of those seem to have come to pass.
- minimaxir 4y agoThat depends how you define success. I don't think many consider a zero-sum game where only the winners are publicized a success.
- adastra22 4y agoIt is objectively not a zero-sum game, which is my point. It has grown from a million, to billion, to trillion dollar industry.
- relaunched 4y agoBigger doesn't prove the game is not zero sum. There is no valid underlying use for any cryptocurrency for the average person. If you take away early adopters, crypto-zealots, shills, criminals organizations and suckers, what's left is far from clear. Is cryptocurrency some transformative, post-governmental currency, controlled by the people - or the next speculative de jour - or a scam - with a better marketing strategy? What seems clear is that when you confound speculative utopian societal changes with the underworld's dream currency, crazy things happen.
- adastra22 4y agoI'm sorry, but do you know what zero-sum means? Maybe go look it up. It's okay, you're one of today's lucky 10,000. The market has grown in size. The value of crypto companies and market caps today is not literally the sum of the value of crypto companies and market caps 10 years ago. Ergo, not zero-sum. This is purely a mathematical statement about industry financials, not a moral judgement about abstract "value" in terms of societal contribution.
- qup 4y agoThe Musk Twitter takeover discussion was full of predictions about how long the site would continue to function, most of which have already been exceeded.
- arp242 4y agoMaybe we should put a lettuce in front of a camera. Seemed to have done the trick last time.
- clipsy 4y agoLet’s not forget, there were also many people on HN predicting at various times during the buyout that: * Musk would somehow weasel his way out of the contract * Musk would demonstrate that Twitter had lied to the SEC about bot numbers * Musk would embrace a policy of free speech absolutism (within legal limitations) upon taking over None of which came to pass.
- bjourne 4y agoI think lots of people were wrong about the F-35. It is a very good warplane even though it cost a ton of money to develop. (Military aviation nerds, feel free to contradict me)
- secfirstmd 4y agoIt's an incredible plane and only going to get better. Also a great budget to bury black projects...
- sklargh 4y agoFinland's selection of the F-35 added data to a growing feeling of mine that the F-35 is a software and production problem reaching maturity. I look at Finland as a country that takes defense seriously and expects to fight hard with exceptionally degraded facilities and logistical support. They chose the F-35 vs. the Super Hornet+Growler, Gripen+GlobalEye & Rafale means something. At a minimum they think the marginal cost of the aircraft is worth the supply chain it offers. I strongly suspect that the aircraft is a far more capable electronic warfare platform than is generally understood. A very good local defense blog covered the process extensively and is well worth spending time with - https://corporalfrisk.com/2021/12/11/f-35a-is-hx-the-winner-takes-it-all/ https://corporalfrisk.com/2021/12/11/f-35a-is-hx-the-winner-...
- dilyevsky 4y agoI still remember g+ post from I think one of Google’s vps advocating to scrap the whole program in favor of A-10. Lol what a clown town it was
- nitwit005 4y agoMost of the complaints seemed centered around cost and delays, rather than the engineering somehow being bad (oxygen issue was an exception). You're echoing the same cost complaint.
- tedunangst 4y agoIntel has gone bankrupt at least a dozen times by now.
- arp242 4y agoHN has been wrong about almost every single topic. It has also been correct about almost every single topic. That's because "HN" isn't a monolithic entity but lots of individuals who often disagree. People complaining about the "HN hivemind" are mostly just folks who have trouble comprehending that people with different opinions exist. I'd also have to disagree with your "everyone hated on Dropbox"; you can read the original thread at [1], many people said "wow, great!" That's actually the majority of the comments, and BrandonM's comments (which is what people usually refer to) is a lot more friendly and nuanced than "hating on the idea". After Drew's response, BrandonM's response can essentially be summarized as "right, I see how this would be useful". Like I said: HN is lots of different people who disagree on essentially everything. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- yboris 4y agoThere's something to be said for The Wisdom of Crowds - an observation that given certain conditions, a crowd can make better estimates / predictions / etc than individuals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds One example is the consistent love for Rust, which makes me think it's probably a technology worth adopting (if it fits the project).
- pjot 4y agoHN has continuously surprised me by the range of opinions, professions, ideas, etc presented. The diversity here is much broader than one might initially assume.
- dang 4y agoThanks for taking care of defending BrandonM this time :) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20brandon&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- NaOH 4y agoThe iPad did not get a particularly warm welcome. In defense of 2010 HN commenters, not that many people commented, and what was written from announcement toward release (and afterward) trended toward a more welcoming mindset. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081519
- ashwagary 4y agoBitcoin. The value of censorship resistant low fee fixed supply digital money seemed to fly over the heads of people that many would expect to see the potential. It still amazes me to this day but as they say, "you will buy bitcoin at the price you deserve".