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Really? Tell me how Dropbox is doing in 5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free. Gmail already has google drive integration. Dropbox c

Really? Tell me how Dropbox is doing in 5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free. Gmail already has google drive integration. Dropbox could've made this chrome plugin years ago. In the future all of Dropbox's revenue will most likely come from SMB's and a few enterprise customers.

Karunamon 12y ago
Dropbox has an app ecosystem, Drive does not. The network effect is strong - if I'm a developer who wants to implement a trivial sync-across-devices feature, I'm going to use Dropbox because it's something my user probably already has. Google Drive offers nothing that Dropbox doesn't, except more storage, which as you mentioned, is quickly becoming meaningless.
- free2rhyme214 12y ago
  I didn't say Dropbox would go away because obviously a player of their market size won't but to say Job's was wrong about them being a feature is also misleading. So they have some clout with developers, SMB's and enterprise customers that's nice but a majority of their revenue comes from consumers who will find a hard time paying for Dropbox when Google will offer Drive for free.
  - detaro 12y ago
    > but a majority of their revenue comes from consumers Really? I would expect the majority of their revenue comes from the business offerings. (I couldn't find any published numbers)
    - free2rhyme214 12y ago
      Yes this is why Box was able to get a foothold on the enterprise because Drew ignored it for awhile.
- wstrange 12y ago
  There are a boatload of apps that integrate with Google Drive. I am not sure how one can claim that there is no ecosystem; It looks pretty healthy to me.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Not in my experience, but perhaps they're finally catching up. Dropbox just seems to be the "go-to".
malchow 12y ago
"5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free" Stuff like this strikes me as a bit sclerotic and shortsighted. Sort of the techno-utopian flip side of the Malthusians of the 70s[1] arguing that food will run out on Earth. The direction of the cost of storage (down) is predictable. But human behavior is not. And the impact of future innovation on human behavior is also not predictable. That's why oil could drop 50% in the last 60 days. It's why Paul Ehrlich and John Malthus were wrong. And why Dropbox could end up being a truly great company. When we're filming 1 TB/s holograms of our kids playing baseball, Dropbox's free 500 PB tier just isn't going to cut it! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  > When we're filming 1 TB/s holograms of our kids playing baseball, Dropbox's free 500 PB tier just isn't going to cut it! I agree, this is a kind of stupid mistake people keep making given that everything around us proves an opposite point - that resource usage always rises up to the limits. We will invent new ways to waste^H^H^H^H^Huse storage, just like we invented new ways to use up surplus bandwidth (video streaming) or electricity (well, everything now). Random potential use - with petabyte disks it starts to make sense to run full-HD surveillance all the time. Or to have even more bloated web frameworks that download half of the Internet as their dependencies.
- Spooky23 12y ago
  It has an air of truth. Dropbox is bar none the best sync client. Almost unbelievably so. But they were in 2010 too. And if you time travelled from 2010 to 2015, you wouldn't really notice anything materially different between Dropbox then and now.
  - graeme 12y ago
    Does it need to be? Dropbox has suited my needs perfectly from the getgo. I imagine they have been changing on the enterprise side. I'm just a small business account.
  - ibrahima 12y ago
lugg 12y ago
> In the future all of Dropbox's revenue will most likely come from SMB's and a few enterprise customers. If they're smart, it will be. They're just simply not going to make money otherwise. Get users on board for free, create a nice product to use that feels familiar, now tell them to get their bosses to let you use it for work. They've been running that model from the outset, I don't see this as being a huge headache for them. > the cost for storage is infinite and free If thats so then it will also be cheap for them to give users the same. I still think dropbox has a good product and will continue to iterate just fine. The product is all in the implementation, its not storage. Storage is the one and only feature of dropboxes app and sharability. (disclaimer: stopped using dropbox when they had that major security flaw years ago)
- free2rhyme214 12y ago
  This is a good assessment.
brianobush 12y ago
And me. I think Dropbox is an essential service. I think of it as a complete product, since when I need a file I go to the directory or the app on my phone. Across all my machines, it just works. If google had their service earlier, I might have picked it up. However, for now I will use dropbox and happily pay for the service.
danieldk 12y ago
Really? Tell me how Dropbox is doing in 5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free. It depends. Microsoft and Google sell you storage cheaply because they want you in their ecosystem. Since Dropbox doesn't have other big products, their focus has always been on integration with other apps (e.g. 1Password, Fastmail, etc.). If there integration continues to be better than the rest. That's definitely a selling point.
bambax 12y ago
Cost of storage is already almost-infinite and almost-free, and yet Dropbox is thriving. Any big (or even not so big) tech company could have built Dropbox, and yet none did; they all produced a half-assed attempt that failed miserably in the marketplace. Recently, it was reported that an MS me-too product was incapable of dealing with file paths of a certain length. In 2014! I think this line "a feature not a product" is really really misguided (to avoid using a stronger word); a feature perfectly executed is precisely what a product should be. So let's talk again in 5 years and see how Dropbox is doing, yes.

Karunamon 12y ago

Dropbox has an app ecosystem, Drive does not. The network effect is strong - if I'm a developer who wants to implement a trivial sync-across-devices feature, I'm going to use Dropbox because it's something my user probably already has. Google Drive offers nothing that Dropbox doesn't, except more storage, which as you mentioned, is quickly becoming meaningless.

free2rhyme214 12y ago
I didn't say Dropbox would go away because obviously a player of their market size won't but to say Job's was wrong about them being a feature is also misleading. So they have some clout with developers, SMB's and enterprise customers that's nice but a majority of their revenue comes from consumers who will find a hard time paying for Dropbox when Google will offer Drive for free.
- detaro 12y ago
  > but a majority of their revenue comes from consumers Really? I would expect the majority of their revenue comes from the business offerings. (I couldn't find any published numbers)
  - free2rhyme214 12y ago
    Yes this is why Box was able to get a foothold on the enterprise because Drew ignored it for awhile.
wstrange 12y ago
There are a boatload of apps that integrate with Google Drive. I am not sure how one can claim that there is no ecosystem; It looks pretty healthy to me.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Not in my experience, but perhaps they're finally catching up. Dropbox just seems to be the "go-to".

malchow 12y ago

"5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free" Stuff like this strikes me as a bit sclerotic and shortsighted. Sort of the techno-utopian flip side of the Malthusians of the 70s[1] arguing that food will run out on Earth. The direction of the cost of storage (down) is predictable. But human behavior is not. And the impact of future innovation on human behavior is also not predictable. That's why oil could drop 50% in the last 60 days. It's why Paul Ehrlich and John Malthus were wrong. And why Dropbox could end up being a truly great company. When we're filming 1 TB/s holograms of our kids playing baseball, Dropbox's free 500 PB tier just isn't going to cut it! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb

TeMPOraL 12y ago
> When we're filming 1 TB/s holograms of our kids playing baseball, Dropbox's free 500 PB tier just isn't going to cut it! I agree, this is a kind of stupid mistake people keep making given that everything around us proves an opposite point - that resource usage always rises up to the limits. We will invent new ways to waste^H^H^H^H^Huse storage, just like we invented new ways to use up surplus bandwidth (video streaming) or electricity (well, everything now). Random potential use - with petabyte disks it starts to make sense to run full-HD surveillance all the time. Or to have even more bloated web frameworks that download half of the Internet as their dependencies.
Spooky23 12y ago
It has an air of truth. Dropbox is bar none the best sync client. Almost unbelievably so. But they were in 2010 too. And if you time travelled from 2010 to 2015, you wouldn't really notice anything materially different between Dropbox then and now.
- graeme 12y ago
  Does it need to be? Dropbox has suited my needs perfectly from the getgo. I imagine they have been changing on the enterprise side. I'm just a small business account.
- ibrahima 12y ago

lugg 12y ago

> In the future all of Dropbox's revenue will most likely come from SMB's and a few enterprise customers. If they're smart, it will be. They're just simply not going to make money otherwise. Get users on board for free, create a nice product to use that feels familiar, now tell them to get their bosses to let you use it for work. They've been running that model from the outset, I don't see this as being a huge headache for them. > the cost for storage is infinite and free If thats so then it will also be cheap for them to give users the same. I still think dropbox has a good product and will continue to iterate just fine. The product is all in the implementation, its not storage. Storage is the one and only feature of dropboxes app and sharability. (disclaimer: stopped using dropbox when they had that major security flaw years ago)

free2rhyme214 12y ago
This is a good assessment.

brianobush 12y ago

And me. I think Dropbox is an essential service. I think of it as a complete product, since when I need a file I go to the directory or the app on my phone. Across all my machines, it just works. If google had their service earlier, I might have picked it up. However, for now I will use dropbox and happily pay for the service.

danieldk 12y ago

Really? Tell me how Dropbox is doing in 5 years from now after the cost for storage is infinite and free. It depends. Microsoft and Google sell you storage cheaply because they want you in their ecosystem. Since Dropbox doesn't have other big products, their focus has always been on integration with other apps (e.g. 1Password, Fastmail, etc.). If there integration continues to be better than the rest. That's definitely a selling point.

bambax 12y ago

Cost of storage is already almost-infinite and almost-free, and yet Dropbox is thriving. Any big (or even not so big) tech company could have built Dropbox, and yet none did; they all produced a half-assed attempt that failed miserably in the marketplace. Recently, it was reported that an MS me-too product was incapable of dealing with file paths of a certain length. In 2014! I think this line "a feature not a product" is really really misguided (to avoid using a stronger word); a feature perfectly executed is precisely what a product should be. So let's talk again in 5 years and see how Dropbox is doing, yes.