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"Dropbox, which is increasingly competing with Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage," This implicitly

"Dropbox, which is increasingly competing with Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage," This implicitly (if not explicitly) reverses the actuality, which is really: "Dropbox, which is increasingly facing competition from Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage," They do a better job later on with, "Those features come at a time large rivals like Microsoft and Amazon Inc are muscling into cloud-storage, a strategic weapon in an era of widespread mobile computing."

execat 13y ago
"zOMG. You guys are going head on against the giants? Wow. So cool." They are probably looking at that reaction from the people who don't know the rough timeline when Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft's own service and Box started.
- judk 13y ago
  Steven Levy wrote about how Google Drive was built long before Dropbox, but was held back from launch due to internal political maneuvering about whether desktop files are welcome in the "cloud" world. But yeah, Dropbox went on market first with abfully supported any-filetype local client sync, not just Office docs and photos and cloud-only videos.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
I have a few friends who work at Box, that company seems much better at extracting revenue from its product via concentrating on the business rather than consumer space.
- seivan 13y ago
  Their product isn't as good, but I bet they have some amazing sales people. Like most 'enterprise' stuff.
  - nlh 13y ago
    Depends what your definition of "good" is -- my company is about to switch to Box from Dropbox. Once you get to a certain size and have a certain type of user (non-power-users), Box is MUCH better for maintaining some organizational structure / permissions.
    - seivan 13y ago
      Is the overhead of having to maintain 'organizational structure / permissions.' worth it? Is your head count > 100?
      - nlh 13y ago
        No, about 20 active users. I personally LOVE Dropbox -- love it. Great tech, great company, great people. But it's ideal for a very specific type of use case -- exactly what they've always wanted to be: A dead-simple shared, well, dropbox that just works. And it does. But we've moved past that. A few months ago one of our sales guys was frustrated that his Macbook was out of hard drive space, so he went through and deleted everything that he didn't recognize. That included most of the shared Dropbox :) We didn't realize until a few days later when people started sending emails along the lines of "hey, where did ___ file go?" We sorted it out, but it cost us time, time, time. Yes, I know it's easy to say "Well that was dumb of him - he should understand how Dropbox works", but one thing you learn about a growing company - particularly a non-tech one - is that not everyone "gets it" the way we geeks do, and at some point you have to stop blaming them and instead adapt to them. Take that story and add another 200 iterations of it and you can see why sometimes, you need some structure and permissions and fine-grained control on a per-folder basis, and Dropbox doesn't have it yet while Box does.
  - objclxt 13y ago
    I would say their branding isn't as good, and for personal use Dropbox is a lot easier to get started with. However, Box has far more functionality than Dropbox, with an emphasis on corporate (I use Dropbox personally, I used to use Box at a previous employer).
  - 13y ago
jonathansizz 13y ago
Since you're nitpicking, I'll just point out that both formulations actually have the same meaning. There's nothing (not even an implication) in the first quoted sentence that suggests that Dropbox is younger than its competitors. 'Competing with' and 'facing competition from' are exact equivalents.
- venomsnake 13y ago
  I read "facing competition from" as being the incumbent and getting a challenge. And "Competing with" all are on equal basis.
  - codex 13y ago
    Do you have any numbers to suggest that Dropbox usage is higher than Google or Microsoft or iCloud?
    - venomsnake 13y ago
      No ... I was just commenting on the linguistic part whether the two phrases mean the same. I moderately don't give a frak about the services due to my irrational, passionate and relentless hatred for everything cloud related. (I love the underlying technologies, I just hate the feudal model of a foreign service holding your data hostage)
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ultramundane828 13y ago
  This irks me because of the absolutism in the writing voice. But I'm sure you'd say there is no absolutism present (not even an implication). Let's leave the linguistic criticisms on this one to Frege and Russell please. I can interpret the phrasing in both your terms and in the previous commenter's terms quite easily.

execat 13y ago

"zOMG. You guys are going head on against the giants? Wow. So cool." They are probably looking at that reaction from the people who don't know the rough timeline when Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft's own service and Box started.

judk 13y ago
Steven Levy wrote about how Google Drive was built long before Dropbox, but was held back from launch due to internal political maneuvering about whether desktop files are welcome in the "cloud" world. But yeah, Dropbox went on market first with abfully supported any-filetype local client sync, not just Office docs and photos and cloud-only videos.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

I have a few friends who work at Box, that company seems much better at extracting revenue from its product via concentrating on the business rather than consumer space.

seivan 13y ago
Their product isn't as good, but I bet they have some amazing sales people. Like most 'enterprise' stuff.
- nlh 13y ago
  Depends what your definition of "good" is -- my company is about to switch to Box from Dropbox. Once you get to a certain size and have a certain type of user (non-power-users), Box is MUCH better for maintaining some organizational structure / permissions.
  - seivan 13y ago
    Is the overhead of having to maintain 'organizational structure / permissions.' worth it? Is your head count > 100?
    - nlh 13y ago
      No, about 20 active users. I personally LOVE Dropbox -- love it. Great tech, great company, great people. But it's ideal for a very specific type of use case -- exactly what they've always wanted to be: A dead-simple shared, well, dropbox that just works. And it does. But we've moved past that. A few months ago one of our sales guys was frustrated that his Macbook was out of hard drive space, so he went through and deleted everything that he didn't recognize. That included most of the shared Dropbox :) We didn't realize until a few days later when people started sending emails along the lines of "hey, where did ___ file go?" We sorted it out, but it cost us time, time, time. Yes, I know it's easy to say "Well that was dumb of him - he should understand how Dropbox works", but one thing you learn about a growing company - particularly a non-tech one - is that not everyone "gets it" the way we geeks do, and at some point you have to stop blaming them and instead adapt to them. Take that story and add another 200 iterations of it and you can see why sometimes, you need some structure and permissions and fine-grained control on a per-folder basis, and Dropbox doesn't have it yet while Box does.
- objclxt 13y ago
  I would say their branding isn't as good, and for personal use Dropbox is a lot easier to get started with. However, Box has far more functionality than Dropbox, with an emphasis on corporate (I use Dropbox personally, I used to use Box at a previous employer).
- 13y ago

jonathansizz 13y ago

Since you're nitpicking, I'll just point out that both formulations actually have the same meaning. There's nothing (not even an implication) in the first quoted sentence that suggests that Dropbox is younger than its competitors. 'Competing with' and 'facing competition from' are exact equivalents.

venomsnake 13y ago
I read "facing competition from" as being the incumbent and getting a challenge. And "Competing with" all are on equal basis.
- codex 13y ago
  Do you have any numbers to suggest that Dropbox usage is higher than Google or Microsoft or iCloud?
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    No ... I was just commenting on the linguistic part whether the two phrases mean the same. I moderately don't give a frak about the services due to my irrational, passionate and relentless hatred for everything cloud related. (I love the underlying technologies, I just hate the feudal model of a foreign service holding your data hostage)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ultramundane828 13y ago
This irks me because of the absolutism in the writing voice. But I'm sure you'd say there is no absolutism present (not even an implication). Let's leave the linguistic criticisms on this one to Frege and Russell please. I can interpret the phrasing in both your terms and in the previous commenter's terms quite easily.