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I guess Dropbox is not going to be too happy about their key supplier competing with them and doing it at 50% cost.

by lubos 14y ago

toomuchtodo 14y ago
You could say that about any company that is mostly digital and uses Amazon for a majority of their infrastructure (i.e. Netflix).
rschmitty 14y ago
It's not like Dropbox is remotely on the same page with pricing vs others. Really they are a rip off, even before Amazon. Their client was just the best (well still is)
- ridruejo 14y ago
  Why is it a ripoff? It just shows that (at least some) people are willing to pay more for a well designed product.
- Jgrubb 14y ago
  I'll gladly pay more for something that works over paying less for something that doesn't. I tried actually using Google Drive for real for about 3 days and it was pathetic. Also no Linux client. Ponied up for a bigger Dropbox and haven't had a single glitch in a couple months.
robszumski 14y ago
I can't wait until Dropbox runs one of the largest deployments of Openstack Swift in the world. I'm sure they get very generous price discounts from AWS, but running it in house must make sense at this point.
gcr 14y ago
Mmm, given my (limited!) experience with AWS, I think Dropbox has a pretty solid advantage in the "Making a sane, user-friendly UI" department.
trimbo 14y ago
If Dropbox hasn't been working on a way to get off S3 this whole time, well, that's a huge oversight on their part.
jonemo 14y ago
I was also under the impression that Dropbox uses S3, but then I read this article in Wired: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/flash-data-centers/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/flash-data-cent... "But if you walk into the right building and down the right aisle, you’ll run into a giant Dropbox logo. Clearly, the file-sharing upstart is proud of its data center gear. [...] Inside its cage, Dropbox is running servers equipped with solid-state drives, also known as SSDs — super-fast storage devices that could one day replace traditional hard drives. The company doesn’t use SSDs in all its servers, but it’s moving in that direction."
- jmathai 14y ago
  They could have plenty of servers for compute and still use S3 for storage. I don't know if they do but having a data center with computers doesn't mean they aren't using S3 for their primary block level storage.
- Scaevolus 14y ago
  Dropbox has dedicated servers for metadata and business logic, but the actual file data is stored on S3.
  - swinglock 14y ago
    Sounds about right, using SSDs to store the user data would be ridiculous.
  - jonemo 14y ago
    That makes sense, thanks for clarifying.
bambax 14y ago
I'm not sure it's a smart move from Amazon. Their offering seems pretty lame (no Linux client, JVM required, etc.) and even if the Amazon price is half of Dropbox it's hard to argue that Dropbox is expensive. From my experience, Dropbox is perfect; it would take me much more than a discount to switch -- actually, there doesn't seem to be anything a competitor could do that would make me switch. The only reason I would leave Dropbox is if they did a major fuckup (like losing all my data). Why would Amazon compete with Dropbox? Don't they have other priorities? (I love Amazon too, but I just don't get this).

I guess Dropbox is not going to be too happy about their key supplier competing with them and doing it at 50% cost.

by lubos 14y ago

I guess Dropbox is not going to be too happy about their key supplier competing with them and doing it at 50% cost.

You could say that about any company that is mostly digital and uses Amazon for a majority of their infrastructure (i.e. Netflix).

rschmitty 14y ago

It's not like Dropbox is remotely on the same page with pricing vs others. Really they are a rip off, even before Amazon. Their client was just the best (well still is)

ridruejo 14y ago
Why is it a ripoff? It just shows that (at least some) people are willing to pay more for a well designed product.
Jgrubb 14y ago
I'll gladly pay more for something that works over paying less for something that doesn't. I tried actually using Google Drive for real for about 3 days and it was pathetic. Also no Linux client. Ponied up for a bigger Dropbox and haven't had a single glitch in a couple months.

robszumski 14y ago

I can't wait until Dropbox runs one of the largest deployments of Openstack Swift in the world. I'm sure they get very generous price discounts from AWS, but running it in house must make sense at this point.

gcr 14y ago

Mmm, given my (limited!) experience with AWS, I think Dropbox has a pretty solid advantage in the "Making a sane, user-friendly UI" department.

trimbo 14y ago

If Dropbox hasn't been working on a way to get off S3 this whole time, well, that's a huge oversight on their part.

jonemo 14y ago

I was also under the impression that Dropbox uses S3, but then I read this article in Wired: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/flash-data-centers/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/flash-data-cent... "But if you walk into the right building and down the right aisle, you’ll run into a giant Dropbox logo. Clearly, the file-sharing upstart is proud of its data center gear. [...] Inside its cage, Dropbox is running servers equipped with solid-state drives, also known as SSDs — super-fast storage devices that could one day replace traditional hard drives. The company doesn’t use SSDs in all its servers, but it’s moving in that direction."

jmathai 14y ago
They could have plenty of servers for compute and still use S3 for storage. I don't know if they do but having a data center with computers doesn't mean they aren't using S3 for their primary block level storage.
Scaevolus 14y ago
Dropbox has dedicated servers for metadata and business logic, but the actual file data is stored on S3.
- swinglock 14y ago
  Sounds about right, using SSDs to store the user data would be ridiculous.
- jonemo 14y ago
  That makes sense, thanks for clarifying.

bambax 14y ago

I'm not sure it's a smart move from Amazon. Their offering seems pretty lame (no Linux client, JVM required, etc.) and even if the Amazon price is half of Dropbox it's hard to argue that Dropbox is expensive. From my experience, Dropbox is perfect; it would take me much more than a discount to switch -- actually, there doesn't seem to be anything a competitor could do that would make me switch. The only reason I would leave Dropbox is if they did a major fuckup (like losing all my data). Why would Amazon compete with Dropbox? Don't they have other priorities? (I love Amazon too, but I just don't get this).