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Similar here. I was a huge Dropbox evangelist to almost everyone I knew. Then Dropbox limited free accounts to three devices. Then I started getting the emails,

Similar here. I was a huge Dropbox evangelist to almost everyone I knew. Then Dropbox limited free accounts to three devices. Then I started getting the emails, texts, and phone calls asking me why the thing I made them sign up wasn't working the way it always had from people who have no experience in the software industry and couldn't understand a company just taking features away from them.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>and couldn't understand a company just taking features away from them Every tech company who offers incredibly generous free stuff eventually does this, even Google. There's no free lunch. All the cloud storage, the dev salaries, the bandwidth needs to be paid somehow. I remember when Google was offering unlimited photo storage in their Google Photos cloud. Well that's been gone for a while now, even for the Pixel users who were supposed to get this indefinitely. Remember Cerberus for Android? They had a "lifetime license" you could buy at one point and after a while they revoked that with a sobbing email saying their business doesn't work without users paying a subscription and they'll have to move everyone, including those who paid the lifetime license to the subscription model, to not go bust. Fuck them. I think enough users have been burned so far by this model: Step 1: Start-up launches cool new app with amazing free feature to gain market share, even though it makes no sense how they're funding it all with nobody paying for it. Step 2: VCs see the amazing user growth and invest. Step 3: Business or lack thereof was unsustainable from the start so VCs start clamping down, shutting down free accounts and squeezing paying users. Step 4: Business slowly dies out since it was never sustainable, and users leave to greener pastures as they see the freebies being taken away from them. Sound familiar? I wish tech companies would be sued for backtracking on their promises they made just to lure users in to fake growth.
- jtriangle 2y ago
  I wouldn't really call 16.125GB "incredibly generous" to be honest.
  - rakoo 2y ago
    If OP was an early adopter, remember that it's 16 GB in 2007-2008. The iPhone didn't exist yet. The top Thinkpad at the time, Lenovo W510 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-Thinkpad-W510-4319-29G-Notebook.26594.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-Thinkpad-W510-43...), had 320 GB of storage; OP had 5% of its storage for free on dropbox. Nowadays we have new laptops with routinely 1TB of storage. Imagine 50GB of free storage with Dropbox, or any equivalent, today.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      >Nowadays we have new laptops with routinely 1TB of storage Unless you buy Macs which still start with 256GB storage.
  - causality0 2y ago
    It felt endless, especially compared to my 100MB yahoo account. I remember sitting there watching the storage counter going up and up and just grinning.
- causality0 2y ago
  Yep, I was also screwed by Cerberus. These days the only software products I pay for are those I can also pirate a backup copy of.

Rinzler89 2y ago

>and couldn't understand a company just taking features away from them Every tech company who offers incredibly generous free stuff eventually does this, even Google. There's no free lunch. All the cloud storage, the dev salaries, the bandwidth needs to be paid somehow. I remember when Google was offering unlimited photo storage in their Google Photos cloud. Well that's been gone for a while now, even for the Pixel users who were supposed to get this indefinitely. Remember Cerberus for Android? They had a "lifetime license" you could buy at one point and after a while they revoked that with a sobbing email saying their business doesn't work without users paying a subscription and they'll have to move everyone, including those who paid the lifetime license to the subscription model, to not go bust. Fuck them. I think enough users have been burned so far by this model: Step 1: Start-up launches cool new app with amazing free feature to gain market share, even though it makes no sense how they're funding it all with nobody paying for it. Step 2: VCs see the amazing user growth and invest. Step 3: Business or lack thereof was unsustainable from the start so VCs start clamping down, shutting down free accounts and squeezing paying users. Step 4: Business slowly dies out since it was never sustainable, and users leave to greener pastures as they see the freebies being taken away from them. Sound familiar? I wish tech companies would be sued for backtracking on their promises they made just to lure users in to fake growth.

jtriangle 2y ago
I wouldn't really call 16.125GB "incredibly generous" to be honest.
- rakoo 2y ago
  If OP was an early adopter, remember that it's 16 GB in 2007-2008. The iPhone didn't exist yet. The top Thinkpad at the time, Lenovo W510 (https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-Thinkpad-W510-4319-29G-Notebook.26594.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-Thinkpad-W510-43...), had 320 GB of storage; OP had 5% of its storage for free on dropbox. Nowadays we have new laptops with routinely 1TB of storage. Imagine 50GB of free storage with Dropbox, or any equivalent, today.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    >Nowadays we have new laptops with routinely 1TB of storage Unless you buy Macs which still start with 256GB storage.
- causality0 2y ago
  It felt endless, especially compared to my 100MB yahoo account. I remember sitting there watching the storage counter going up and up and just grinning.
causality0 2y ago
Yep, I was also screwed by Cerberus. These days the only software products I pay for are those I can also pirate a backup copy of.