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Having worked in this industry for two decades (and a Dropbox user since its public launch) the "product strategy" of most of these companies is close to just s

Having worked in this industry for two decades (and a Dropbox user since its public launch) the "product strategy" of most of these companies is close to just spitballing. If you want a recent example you can look at Facebook lighting almost $40 billion with their Metaverse product. To add to that, Product leadership at technology companies has evolved to be much less technical, so they aren't going to have any deep insight about AI that, say, a software engineer who has worked in that field might have. But hey, if in a few years Dropbox launches a popular AI-based feature I'll gladly eat my words because I'll probably be using it. They could benefit from enhancing their search functionality, for example -- but that's just a nice-to-have feature, not something revolutionary.

xp84 3y ago
I’m genuinely surprised/impressed both Box and Dropbox still exist since they’re single-product-line pure plays, for enterprise only (no way do enough consumers pay for either to matter), and both are competing with what is either free or very cheap to bundle alternatives from MS and GOOG (and what company doesn’t have either 365 or G Suite already?? I know Dropbox tried to make its own office suite a few years back but I’ve never heard of anyone using it. So, it’s a testament to some amazing sales guys that they’re even alive.
Spivak 4y ago
I think Dropbox is, like a lot of companies right now, is struggling to find new revenue with new features added to their existing product lines and is divesting themselves of new work on mature products to focus on new markets. AI just being something exciting in general that has everyone hyped. I would have thought HN would celebrate a company that's publicly decided to stop fucking with the Wi-Fi.
- rexreed 4y ago
  You had me until that last sentence. I have no idea what you're referring to with Wi-Fi.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    The fact that Dropbox likely is going to stop constantly messing with their core offerings.
Aeolun 4y ago
> look at Facebook lighting almost $40 billion with their Metaverse product That’s only because it failed (and the jury is still out on that). If it works they’ll conquer an entirely new market right from the start. Certainly a much better long term strategy than hoping they can keep up their advertising revenue.
- rchaud 4y ago
  It won't! That's the most galling aspect of this gigantic waste of money. That you're calling it a "new market" is precisely the problem --- when you've sunk this many billions into something, you can't wait that long before needing to make that money back. The "metaverse" is ironically set up to be Facebook's walled garden. It has no other use, it cannot be repurposed or made modular in any way. It's not a standalone product that say, integrates with Google Ads, something that they could try to offload to some other company. It's Zuck's baby, and in the middle of slow and protracted crib death.
  - oblio 3y ago
    The metaverse is their shot at the next OS (or platform, but that's too vague). He who controls the OS controls everything (Apple for their specific desktops, Microsoft for every other desktop and laptop, Apple and Google for mobile, Google for the web - yes, the web is for all intents and purposes another platform/OS). Facebook has their own platform but it's built on top of others so it can be choked off. Facebook wants its own OS.
  - nemothekid 4y ago
    >when you've sunk this many billions into something, you can't wait that long before needing to make that money back. The last 15 years of tech says otherwise. Tesla is the most obvious counterpoint to this example. I don't think the Metaverse is useful, but my issue with Facebook isn't that he poured 30B into what was essentially R&D.
    - rchaud 4y ago
      Tesla is an automotive company whose finances and stock valuation work on very different principles compared to an ad company like Facebook.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
I'll add my 2c because I'm getting a little annoyed that folks who only have familiarity with Dropbox's consumer offering seem to think they have any idea what they're talking about. In an enterprise, it can be extremely difficult to ensure your permissions are what you want them to be: that people can share things easily with the right groups, but also that sensitive data is not inadvertently exposed. Dropbox in particular excels at sharing documents with others outside your company, but that is also where there is obviously the most risk. Currently, I find Dropbox's enterprise permissions management tools pretty difficult to use. There are loads of options and it's too easy to get something "wrong" if you inadvertently miss checking the right checkbox. It's not hard for me to see how AI tools could help improve this situation, and especially to provide additional capabilities in the DLP (data loss prevention) space that would make it easier to detect misconfigured access.
- qsort 4y ago
  > There are loads of options and it's too easy to get something "wrong" if you inadvertently miss checking the right checkbox. This seems the exact opposite of what the current crop of AI is good at.
  - caskstrength 4y ago
    > This seems the exact opposite of what the current crop of AI is good at. Yeah, last thing I want when trying to share a file with people outside of my organization is some opaque kafkaesque chatgpt-wannabe model telling me "I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that".
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    "I'm 99% certain that you're a poodle, and poodles are not allowed to share that document. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
  - hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
    The AI doesn't need to be the end-all-be-all of defining permissions. But it's not hard to imagine a couple of areas where AI could help: 1. Letting users enter desired permissions setting in a natural language, and then the AI recommending checkbox settings, and, importantly, explaining these settings. 2. Useful as a monitoring/alerting system for DLP. Most DLP systems already use some sort of machine learning for identifying sensitive docs. 3. Easily running "test scenarios" to show to admins who can and can't get access to particular docs. There is a huge chasm between "AI owns all my permission settings" to "AI can make it easier and more robust for me to understand what my permission settings should be."
birdyrooster 4y ago
Seriously it’s embarrassing how leadership in many companies has ZERO vision for AI right now. Too focused on buying houses, drinking wine and riding horses. I think these people need to retire already.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  Snark aside, this is something that's always kind of baffled me. If I built a company and eventually found myself in extremely high value (ie, 9 figures), I'd be looking to retire ASAP. That would be it. I won capitalism. Time to spend the rest of my life on Maui sipping Mai-Tais on the beach. Why anybody would want to continue to work when they already have enough wealth to live an extremely lavish lifestyle without working ever again is beyond me.
  - ihatepython 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - echelon 4y ago
    Because no matter how many experiences you accrue or how much leisure you have, you're already dead on the geologic time scale. With that perspective, the best thing to do is keep on pushing. Despite whatever pain and headache that might bring, it's one act our short lives can use to push against entropy and the dying universe. If I ever come into such wealth, I'll spend it all solving as much as I can through my direct involvement.
    - mden 4y ago
      Yeah.. but do you think most ultra-rich elite are pushing against entropy or contributing more to it or at best staying neutral while further growing their wealth?
    - TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
      By actively working to make the world worse and increase the sum total of human suffering, à la Musk and Bezos? If I ever came into such wealth, I think I'd spend my time going back to college to study linguistics. Maybe document some dying languages. Try to contribute to humanity a bit.
silksowed 4y ago
add in an equivalent to https://www.glean.com/ https://www.glean.com/ to enterprise dropbox and you have a new AI product that actually solves large org problems
RestlessMind 4y ago
> If you want a recent example you can look at Facebook lighting almost $40 billion with their Metaverse product. That's just your hindsight bias. Lot of companies have spent billions of dollars chasing apparently worthless product ideas. Some of them turned out to be big hits - electric car in 2009, social media based on 140 characters posting limit, online bookstore, a website to check out pics of your classmates and poke them etc. I like the fact that Facebook was audacious enough to spend 40B dollars on trying out something new. If successful, it would have opened up a huge new field for tinkering, just like the wave of social media companies in 2009-10.
d0mine 4y ago
Use-case: ask anything you want about files stored in your Dropbox account (like https://chatpdf.com https://chatpdf.com but for more files)
ergocoder 4y ago
> But hey, if in a few years Dropbox launches a popular AI-based feature Ooh betting on a failure? That is the easiest bet ever. If I bet on everything failing, I would win 99% of the time.
rco8786 4y ago
> the "product strategy" of most of these companies is close to just spitballing Literally every company. That doesn't mean that a strategy doesn't exist and is actively curated and maintained by people whose full-time job it is to do so. It's always an educated guess at best. But it's pretty silly to come into a thread like this and be like "psh they store files what could they possibly do with AI".

xp84 3y ago

I’m genuinely surprised/impressed both Box and Dropbox still exist since they’re single-product-line pure plays, for enterprise only (no way do enough consumers pay for either to matter), and both are competing with what is either free or very cheap to bundle alternatives from MS and GOOG (and what company doesn’t have either 365 or G Suite already?? I know Dropbox tried to make its own office suite a few years back but I’ve never heard of anyone using it. So, it’s a testament to some amazing sales guys that they’re even alive.

Spivak 4y ago

I think Dropbox is, like a lot of companies right now, is struggling to find new revenue with new features added to their existing product lines and is divesting themselves of new work on mature products to focus on new markets. AI just being something exciting in general that has everyone hyped. I would have thought HN would celebrate a company that's publicly decided to stop fucking with the Wi-Fi.

rexreed 4y ago
You had me until that last sentence. I have no idea what you're referring to with Wi-Fi.
- Spivak 4y ago
  The fact that Dropbox likely is going to stop constantly messing with their core offerings.

Aeolun 4y ago

> look at Facebook lighting almost $40 billion with their Metaverse product That’s only because it failed (and the jury is still out on that). If it works they’ll conquer an entirely new market right from the start. Certainly a much better long term strategy than hoping they can keep up their advertising revenue.

rchaud 4y ago
It won't! That's the most galling aspect of this gigantic waste of money. That you're calling it a "new market" is precisely the problem --- when you've sunk this many billions into something, you can't wait that long before needing to make that money back. The "metaverse" is ironically set up to be Facebook's walled garden. It has no other use, it cannot be repurposed or made modular in any way. It's not a standalone product that say, integrates with Google Ads, something that they could try to offload to some other company. It's Zuck's baby, and in the middle of slow and protracted crib death.
- oblio 3y ago
  The metaverse is their shot at the next OS (or platform, but that's too vague). He who controls the OS controls everything (Apple for their specific desktops, Microsoft for every other desktop and laptop, Apple and Google for mobile, Google for the web - yes, the web is for all intents and purposes another platform/OS). Facebook has their own platform but it's built on top of others so it can be choked off. Facebook wants its own OS.
- nemothekid 4y ago
  >when you've sunk this many billions into something, you can't wait that long before needing to make that money back. The last 15 years of tech says otherwise. Tesla is the most obvious counterpoint to this example. I don't think the Metaverse is useful, but my issue with Facebook isn't that he poured 30B into what was essentially R&D.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Tesla is an automotive company whose finances and stock valuation work on very different principles compared to an ad company like Facebook.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

I'll add my 2c because I'm getting a little annoyed that folks who only have familiarity with Dropbox's consumer offering seem to think they have any idea what they're talking about. In an enterprise, it can be extremely difficult to ensure your permissions are what you want them to be: that people can share things easily with the right groups, but also that sensitive data is not inadvertently exposed. Dropbox in particular excels at sharing documents with others outside your company, but that is also where there is obviously the most risk. Currently, I find Dropbox's enterprise permissions management tools pretty difficult to use. There are loads of options and it's too easy to get something "wrong" if you inadvertently miss checking the right checkbox. It's not hard for me to see how AI tools could help improve this situation, and especially to provide additional capabilities in the DLP (data loss prevention) space that would make it easier to detect misconfigured access.

qsort 4y ago
> There are loads of options and it's too easy to get something "wrong" if you inadvertently miss checking the right checkbox. This seems the exact opposite of what the current crop of AI is good at.
- caskstrength 4y ago
  > This seems the exact opposite of what the current crop of AI is good at. Yeah, last thing I want when trying to share a file with people outside of my organization is some opaque kafkaesque chatgpt-wannabe model telling me "I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that".
- jonny_eh 4y ago
  "I'm 99% certain that you're a poodle, and poodles are not allowed to share that document. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  The AI doesn't need to be the end-all-be-all of defining permissions. But it's not hard to imagine a couple of areas where AI could help: 1. Letting users enter desired permissions setting in a natural language, and then the AI recommending checkbox settings, and, importantly, explaining these settings. 2. Useful as a monitoring/alerting system for DLP. Most DLP systems already use some sort of machine learning for identifying sensitive docs. 3. Easily running "test scenarios" to show to admins who can and can't get access to particular docs. There is a huge chasm between "AI owns all my permission settings" to "AI can make it easier and more robust for me to understand what my permission settings should be."

birdyrooster 4y ago

Seriously it’s embarrassing how leadership in many companies has ZERO vision for AI right now. Too focused on buying houses, drinking wine and riding horses. I think these people need to retire already.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
Snark aside, this is something that's always kind of baffled me. If I built a company and eventually found myself in extremely high value (ie, 9 figures), I'd be looking to retire ASAP. That would be it. I won capitalism. Time to spend the rest of my life on Maui sipping Mai-Tais on the beach. Why anybody would want to continue to work when they already have enough wealth to live an extremely lavish lifestyle without working ever again is beyond me.
- ihatepython 3y ago
  [flagged]
- echelon 4y ago
  Because no matter how many experiences you accrue or how much leisure you have, you're already dead on the geologic time scale. With that perspective, the best thing to do is keep on pushing. Despite whatever pain and headache that might bring, it's one act our short lives can use to push against entropy and the dying universe. If I ever come into such wealth, I'll spend it all solving as much as I can through my direct involvement.
  - mden 4y ago
    Yeah.. but do you think most ultra-rich elite are pushing against entropy or contributing more to it or at best staying neutral while further growing their wealth?
  - TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
    By actively working to make the world worse and increase the sum total of human suffering, à la Musk and Bezos? If I ever came into such wealth, I think I'd spend my time going back to college to study linguistics. Maybe document some dying languages. Try to contribute to humanity a bit.

silksowed 4y ago

add in an equivalent to https://www.glean.com/ https://www.glean.com/ to enterprise dropbox and you have a new AI product that actually solves large org problems

RestlessMind 4y ago

> If you want a recent example you can look at Facebook lighting almost $40 billion with their Metaverse product. That's just your hindsight bias. Lot of companies have spent billions of dollars chasing apparently worthless product ideas. Some of them turned out to be big hits - electric car in 2009, social media based on 140 characters posting limit, online bookstore, a website to check out pics of your classmates and poke them etc. I like the fact that Facebook was audacious enough to spend 40B dollars on trying out something new. If successful, it would have opened up a huge new field for tinkering, just like the wave of social media companies in 2009-10.

d0mine 4y ago

Use-case: ask anything you want about files stored in your Dropbox account (like https://chatpdf.com https://chatpdf.com but for more files)

ergocoder 4y ago

> But hey, if in a few years Dropbox launches a popular AI-based feature Ooh betting on a failure? That is the easiest bet ever. If I bet on everything failing, I would win 99% of the time.

rco8786 4y ago

> the "product strategy" of most of these companies is close to just spitballing Literally every company. That doesn't mean that a strategy doesn't exist and is actively curated and maintained by people whose full-time job it is to do so. It's always an educated guess at best. But it's pretty silly to come into a thread like this and be like "psh they store files what could they possibly do with AI".