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What I find surprising is that Dropbox is apparently willing to just fit in the narrow space Apple has carved out for them. Especially now, when companies are

by t8sr 4y ago

What I find surprising is that Dropbox is apparently willing to just fit in the narrow space Apple has carved out for them. Especially now, when companies are cutting their spend, this is an extraordinary misstep. If I am already paying for iCloud, Google Apps, or Office 365, I can get exactly what Dropbox offers for free, and better integrated with the other productivity apps. So why exactly would anyone use Dropbox now? There is nothing to differentiate them. It’s hard to see this as anything other than the beginning of the end for Dropbox.

microtonal 4y ago
So why exactly would anyone use Dropbox now? There is nothing to differentiate them. Their sync is just must faster and they actually do block-level sync, which the other major providers still haven't implemented yet after over ten years. I understand why people go to the competition, but I think it's a mistake. The FAANG offerings just provide enough (especially disk space) to lure people into their ecosystems, but they don't really care much about file sync, and therefore they are all quite miserable. It is a bit like Microsoft Teams. Companies choose Teams because they have an Office365 subscription for Microsoft Office anyway and it is cheaper than Slack. On the surface, Slack does not seem to have much of a competitive advantage anymore. So, if you are simply bean counting, it's clear that you should switch to Teams. But in the meanwhile, everyone using Teams feels miserable to be trapped in it.
- MikusR 4y ago
  OneDrive does block level sync
  - microtonal 4y ago
    Ah, cool, I missed that they added it in 2020. Google Drive still doesn't seem to support it.
    - MikusR 4y ago
      Google Drive also used to (maybe still does) change names of your files if they contained parenthesis.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I think most people are using block-level sync. Hell, even Syncthing has block-level synchronization now.
  - solarkraft 4y ago
    > Hell, even Syncthing has block-level synchronization now. I thought it (BEP) was always a core feature?
wlonkly 4y ago
Because the rest of the company is on Dropbox already, and it's easier to stay there than migrate everybody. Single personal-use accounts aren't their bread and butter.

by t8sr 4y ago

microtonal 4y ago

So why exactly would anyone use Dropbox now? There is nothing to differentiate them. Their sync is just must faster and they actually do block-level sync, which the other major providers still haven't implemented yet after over ten years. I understand why people go to the competition, but I think it's a mistake. The FAANG offerings just provide enough (especially disk space) to lure people into their ecosystems, but they don't really care much about file sync, and therefore they are all quite miserable. It is a bit like Microsoft Teams. Companies choose Teams because they have an Office365 subscription for Microsoft Office anyway and it is cheaper than Slack. On the surface, Slack does not seem to have much of a competitive advantage anymore. So, if you are simply bean counting, it's clear that you should switch to Teams. But in the meanwhile, everyone using Teams feels miserable to be trapped in it.

MikusR 4y ago
OneDrive does block level sync
- microtonal 4y ago
  Ah, cool, I missed that they added it in 2020. Google Drive still doesn't seem to support it.
  - MikusR 4y ago
    Google Drive also used to (maybe still does) change names of your files if they contained parenthesis.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
smoldesu 4y ago
I think most people are using block-level sync. Hell, even Syncthing has block-level synchronization now.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  > Hell, even Syncthing has block-level synchronization now. I thought it (BEP) was always a core feature?

wlonkly 4y ago

Because the rest of the company is on Dropbox already, and it's easier to stay there than migrate everybody. Single personal-use accounts aren't their bread and butter.