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I don't see how Dropbox wins this. Dropbox isn't going to be able to beat Amazon on price reselling Amazon's own cloud. Dropbox doesn't have any complements, li

by cwyers 12y ago

I don't see how Dropbox wins this. Dropbox isn't going to be able to beat Amazon on price reselling Amazon's own cloud. Dropbox doesn't have any complements, like Google does with Google Docs and Gmail and Android or Microsoft has with Windows and Office or Amazon has with their MP3 marketplace and their Fire devices. It's the whole Jobs thing with 'you're a feature, not a product.'

artursapek 12y ago
Is Dropbox working on moving to its own hardware? It seems like being bound to S3 must be a big business risk for them.
- minimaxir 12y ago
  Dropbox's business strategies (Carousel) and acquisitions ("Dropbox for Music", "Dropbox for Documents") make it seem like Dropbox is opting for diversity instead of opting for efficiency, that could be passed down to the end-user with lower prices.
  - cwyers 12y ago
    And that's probably wise -- it's not like the markup on S3 is so huge that it's an obvious big win to move off it once you consider the size of the up-front investment to build up a similarly featured, distributed and redundant cloud storage system of their own. Diversification is a good idea for them, I just think it's a very low probability of success.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      Unless they have substantial discounts over the public S3 prices (which is certainly possible - even likely), you can cut 50% or more off the S3 costs very easily. The AWS markups are crazy high. You can even save substantial money over "pure" S3 just by proxying and caching requests for the most heavily trafficked objects somewhere with lower bandwidth costs.
      - cwyers 12y ago
        We don't know the rate they're getting, except that it's likely that it's lower than the public rate. They DO know what the rate is, and they're still using S3.
- amalag 12y ago
  Dropbox can merge with Backblaze ;-)
  - res0nat0r 12y ago
    All of the syncing is done via ec2 instances, so moving the backend storage offsite would cost a ton more, and be a lot slower :(
    - amalag 12y ago
      If you have a machine for storage, you can assume you will have a machine next to it (or on it) for syncing. Anyway they have to pay for their sync machines but at their scale I don't know if it would cost more than ec2.
wanderingstan 12y ago
At least for now, Dropbox wins with better software and features. Google drive has crapped out on me several times in the last years, forcing me to re-download everything from the server to my local box. I've also had cases where it couldn't resolve a sync issue and split a file into two versions. Neither of these has happened with dropbox. Given Google's obvious prowess with servers, I'm actually amazed Google drive isn't better than it is.
- 300bps 12y ago
  I agree with you that DropBox is the gold standard in "it just works" but I have been using Google Drive for about a year now on a 1 TB plan consuming 850 GB of space without a single issue. I store everything on there including JPGs, AVCHD videos, TrueCrypt volumes and every other kind of file type. Never had a single sync issue or slow sync speed. OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) on the other hand... That constantly left filename.machinename split versions and the sync speed was uselessly slow.
  - mb_72 12y ago
    I tried Google Drive about a year ago, and it appeared to choke on large files (I had a couple of 4Gb VMs), and pausing during attempted uploads always resulted in having to start over the upload from scratch. Still sticking with CrashPlan for now.
    - driverdan 12y ago
      CrashPlan is a backup service and not directly comparable to standard file storage services.
- bmelton 12y ago
  And all things being equal, for some reason, Dropbox syncing is much faster than Google Drive. If I empty out both drives and start from scratch, then put the same files in both, it seems to take Google Drive around 350% time to sync the same files.
kule 12y ago
I don't think Dropbox has ever tried to compete on price though, have they? For me, there are two things that make Dropbox a better option than MS/Amazon/Google: 1) It's their core business. You know it's not going to be dropped next week because the side project wasn't popular enough or it's not making enough money. 2) The on iPhone/Mac apps that I use quite often offer a sync option with Dropbox not many sync with other providers.
- cwyers 12y ago
  Ignoring Google and their "empire where the sun always sets," cloud storage is going to become a thing like MP3 players and web browsers -- it's going to become part of the base expectation of having a platform. It's already in Windows, iOS and Android. It's not going away.
  - danieldk 12y ago
    Definitely. But so far, Dropbox is faster and has better sharing functionality (e.g. show me a list of folders that I shared, which e.g. Google Drive cannot do). For business use, the $10 per month is peanuts for a more seamless experience. Besides that, Dropbox seems to be branching out. There is Carousel, which I like quite much compared to the cl*sterfuck that is Google Plus photos. I can put my photos in regular Dropbox folders, but still have a Flickr-like experience. Also, there is Mailbox. Of course, they need a better collaborative editing story than 'you can save from Office on Android/iOS to Dropbox'.
crypt1d 12y ago
Well I was about try out Amazon but then I saw they don't have a Linux client... so I'm sticking with Dropbox for now.
- lsaferite 12y ago
  Well, since it's an open API I have no doubt there will be a Linux client soon. Personally I'll wait until I can get a client that can encrypt my data.
  - bjacobel 12y ago
    The API is open, but undocumented and unversioned (ie, liable to introduce breaking changes at any time). I would never try to build a third-party product based on this service. That's what S3 is for.
- cozzyd 12y ago
  I know... I have an Amazon Prime account and it irks me that I can only use the web interface.... although I wonder if https://github.com/handyman5/acd_fuse https://github.com/handyman5/acd_fuse still works. a FUSE interface would be much more convenient than any desktop client.
johnchristopher 12y ago
Dropbox user experience hasn't changed that much over the years. Amazon, Google and MS are after users to absorb them into their other products and then merge or drop those products years letter. My Dropbox account still works the same after all those years, I can't say the same of Google Drive/Doc SkyDrive/OneDrive/LiveMesh/etc. > It's the whole Jobs thing with 'you're a feature, not a product.' I'd turned that the other way. Dropbox is a product while Google, MS and Amazon's dropbox-like offers are a side-feature of other business. edit: Then there is the `brand` argument. Dropbox is solid. Note: I am not convinced those arguments are valid in the business space but this is how I think it pans out for most `standard` users (free and paying).
higherpurpose 12y ago
Dropbox, which has its whole business around selling storage, unlike companies like Amazon and Google, who also want to mine your data, could offer end-to-end encryption for the files like Spideroak. Of course, I can't imagine its most influential board member, Condoleezza Rice, will ever agree to that.
- lsaferite 12y ago
  Well, since the ACS API is open, why couldn't you just write a client that encrypts your data as well?
randall 12y ago
They already have network effects. I wouldn't underestimate those. Also startups are rarely zero sum, so for Dropbox to be successful™ it doesn't have to absolutely murder the competition, just be significant enough that the competition doesn't murder it.
- josho 12y ago
  To expand on that, the primary network effect that I see are applications integrating into the dropbox storage system. Smart move by Dropbox. I wonder if Amazon can somehow leverage their own network effects into this product. e.g. Lots of content is already stored in S3.
eloisant 12y ago
The problem is not Dropbox being "a feature, not a product". It's a perfectly fine product, but it's hard to compete with products given away as loss leaders by companies who have other sources of revenue.
- danieldk 12y ago
  That's why people should stick with Dropbox (or others like SpiderOak). Because the companies who give it away as loss leaders will probably neglect their products or index your data for advertising, etc. (Perhaps with the exception of Microsoft, who seem to want to sell Office with OneDrive.)
  - niels_olson 12y ago
    > Perhaps with the exception of Microsoft, who seem to want to sell Office with OneDrive. I think this may be the most prescient comment here. I wonder if Dropbox and Microsoft may start looking more and more alike. MSFT with a OS as a side business and Dropbox with an office suite as a side business.
rattray 12y ago
It'll be tough for Dropbox. I imagine the #1 thing they have going for them is a strong consumer-facing brand and a bunch of existing customers (who are likely still telling their friends to download Dropbox, though who knows how fast). I also suspect they're working on a full office suite - they acquired Mailbox and Hackpad more recently. Amazon doesn't have much strength as a consumer-facing tech brand, afaict. As a developer, I trust S3. But as a consumer, do I trust Amazon's software to be usable or reliable? I'm not so sure. Still, long-term, I find it hard to see things panning out for good ol DBX without something big coming out soon...
phamilton 12y ago
Do we know for a fact that Dropbox is still just am S3 reseller? I would be very surprised if that were still true.
- stingraycharles 12y ago
  Well the data is hosted on s3.amazonaws.com at least once, judging by the urls. So they either use it as a complement, or exclusively.
- vidarh 12y ago
  It appears to be true, though I'd imagine they're getting very substantial discounts from Amazon. Otherwise it'd be far cheaper for them to self-host at their scale.
  - semerda 12y ago
    If that's true wouldn't it make sense for Dropbox to form some sort of a a whitelabel partnership with Amazon? Building cross platform reliable software to sync and method of storing data (ie. avoiding duplicates et al) is still an important piece in creating a smooth user experience while minimizing cost on the storage side.
beambot 12y ago
Dropbox should convert their storage backend to a single account on Amazon's new "unlimited" service so that their per-user hosting costs are approximately nil... ;-) Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1499/ http://xkcd.com/1499/
- andrewaylett 12y ago
  https://xkcd.com/908/ https://xkcd.com/908/
jkmcf 12y ago
Dropbox has great integration on mobile apps. I don't recall more than a few of my apps having integration beyond Dropbox and iCloud. I don't know about Android, but I really hope iOS moves towards a generic cloud storage interface so that competitors can more easily get traction, but I know this isn't in Apple's interest.
semerda 12y ago
How about their MBaaS? I'm a fan of their Datastore API. Would welcome Dropbox expanding their apps ecosystem support.
sschueller 12y ago
One word: pre-install Dropbox is pre-installed on a lot of samsung smartphones and can not be removed. This removes the hurdle for people who don't know much about cloud storage from picking one. Although I consider this bloatware it appears to be a very good marketing strategy.
- notatoad 12y ago
  Not for long. The new Galaxy S6 has OneDrive pre-installed instead of DropBox, and samsung has indicated that the rest of their lineup will be going this way too. And of course, all new windows computers come with OneDrive pre-installed as well. I think HTC is the only OEM still pre-installing DropBox.
yalogin 12y ago
I don't understand how Google and Microsoft let Dropbox (and Box) to gain any market share at all. It's poor execution from both these giants, particularly Google. I am surprised Dropbox was able to grow for this long.
hyperbovine 12y ago
The fact that people think Dropbox is so vulnerable tells me how secure they really are as a leader in this space. Let me explain. Dropbox works so beautifully and transparently that people mistakenly assume that what they are doing must be easy. (Netflix suffers / benefits from a similar fallacy with respect to streaming.) In reality, distributed storage and sync is quite a challenging engineering problem, which Dropbox has about a 10 year jump on solving. There is a notorious surfeit of brilliant engineers at Google, but have you actually used Google Drive? I tried it when it came out and it crashed at least once a day. Maybe it's gotten better since, but so has Dropbox. Overcoming these technical deficits is really hard and expensive (just look at Apple Maps) and often painful for the end user. I wouldn't write Dropbox off just yet. Also, with the forthcoming IPO it's conceivable that they will start to build out their own data centers.
- sangnoir 12y ago
  I highly doubt that Dropbox has a 10 year head-start (over Google and Amazon) in the area of "distributed storage and sync" - unless you meant it in the narrow case of building desktop sync clients.
choppaface 12y ago
Dropbox can still win. First, have you tried the Cloud Drive UI? It's barely hackathon-level quality. They have basic photo browsing, which is nice, but the Dropbox UX is orders of magnitude better at the time of writing. Second, a lot of people use Dropbox to share files. Amazon's service is currently about back-ups. They're somewhat different use cases, and sharing is arguably a harder problem than backup because the sharing experience must have much less friction to succeed. So Dropbox is already years ahead of Amazon in this regard. Third, storage at scale is still much cheaper than what anybody is charging. A 4U of RAID 5 SATA drives costs quite a bit less than Amazon's $59/yr/TB price point. (I know Cloud Drive is "unlimited" at that price, but survey data suggest to me most users have less than 1TB of data or unwilling to upload that much). While Dropbox purportedly uses S3 heavily, S3 is about $360/yr/TB. Clearly Dropbox must have storage hedged with something else to back their Pro service (even if that tech is still under development). Dropbox can, with high probability, meet Amazon's offering here, and they'll likely blow Amazon's UX out of the park.

by cwyers 12y ago

artursapek 12y ago

Is Dropbox working on moving to its own hardware? It seems like being bound to S3 must be a big business risk for them.

minimaxir 12y ago
Dropbox's business strategies (Carousel) and acquisitions ("Dropbox for Music", "Dropbox for Documents") make it seem like Dropbox is opting for diversity instead of opting for efficiency, that could be passed down to the end-user with lower prices.
- cwyers 12y ago
  And that's probably wise -- it's not like the markup on S3 is so huge that it's an obvious big win to move off it once you consider the size of the up-front investment to build up a similarly featured, distributed and redundant cloud storage system of their own. Diversification is a good idea for them, I just think it's a very low probability of success.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    Unless they have substantial discounts over the public S3 prices (which is certainly possible - even likely), you can cut 50% or more off the S3 costs very easily. The AWS markups are crazy high. You can even save substantial money over "pure" S3 just by proxying and caching requests for the most heavily trafficked objects somewhere with lower bandwidth costs.
    - cwyers 12y ago
      We don't know the rate they're getting, except that it's likely that it's lower than the public rate. They DO know what the rate is, and they're still using S3.
amalag 12y ago
Dropbox can merge with Backblaze ;-)
- res0nat0r 12y ago
  All of the syncing is done via ec2 instances, so moving the backend storage offsite would cost a ton more, and be a lot slower :(
  - amalag 12y ago
    If you have a machine for storage, you can assume you will have a machine next to it (or on it) for syncing. Anyway they have to pay for their sync machines but at their scale I don't know if it would cost more than ec2.

wanderingstan 12y ago

At least for now, Dropbox wins with better software and features. Google drive has crapped out on me several times in the last years, forcing me to re-download everything from the server to my local box. I've also had cases where it couldn't resolve a sync issue and split a file into two versions. Neither of these has happened with dropbox. Given Google's obvious prowess with servers, I'm actually amazed Google drive isn't better than it is.

300bps 12y ago
I agree with you that DropBox is the gold standard in "it just works" but I have been using Google Drive for about a year now on a 1 TB plan consuming 850 GB of space without a single issue. I store everything on there including JPGs, AVCHD videos, TrueCrypt volumes and every other kind of file type. Never had a single sync issue or slow sync speed. OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) on the other hand... That constantly left filename.machinename split versions and the sync speed was uselessly slow.
- mb_72 12y ago
  I tried Google Drive about a year ago, and it appeared to choke on large files (I had a couple of 4Gb VMs), and pausing during attempted uploads always resulted in having to start over the upload from scratch. Still sticking with CrashPlan for now.
  - driverdan 12y ago
    CrashPlan is a backup service and not directly comparable to standard file storage services.
bmelton 12y ago
And all things being equal, for some reason, Dropbox syncing is much faster than Google Drive. If I empty out both drives and start from scratch, then put the same files in both, it seems to take Google Drive around 350% time to sync the same files.

kule 12y ago

I don't think Dropbox has ever tried to compete on price though, have they? For me, there are two things that make Dropbox a better option than MS/Amazon/Google: 1) It's their core business. You know it's not going to be dropped next week because the side project wasn't popular enough or it's not making enough money. 2) The on iPhone/Mac apps that I use quite often offer a sync option with Dropbox not many sync with other providers.

cwyers 12y ago
Ignoring Google and their "empire where the sun always sets," cloud storage is going to become a thing like MP3 players and web browsers -- it's going to become part of the base expectation of having a platform. It's already in Windows, iOS and Android. It's not going away.
- danieldk 12y ago
  Definitely. But so far, Dropbox is faster and has better sharing functionality (e.g. show me a list of folders that I shared, which e.g. Google Drive cannot do). For business use, the $10 per month is peanuts for a more seamless experience. Besides that, Dropbox seems to be branching out. There is Carousel, which I like quite much compared to the cl*sterfuck that is Google Plus photos. I can put my photos in regular Dropbox folders, but still have a Flickr-like experience. Also, there is Mailbox. Of course, they need a better collaborative editing story than 'you can save from Office on Android/iOS to Dropbox'.

crypt1d 12y ago

Well I was about try out Amazon but then I saw they don't have a Linux client... so I'm sticking with Dropbox for now.

lsaferite 12y ago
Well, since it's an open API I have no doubt there will be a Linux client soon. Personally I'll wait until I can get a client that can encrypt my data.
- bjacobel 12y ago
  The API is open, but undocumented and unversioned (ie, liable to introduce breaking changes at any time). I would never try to build a third-party product based on this service. That's what S3 is for.
cozzyd 12y ago
I know... I have an Amazon Prime account and it irks me that I can only use the web interface.... although I wonder if https://github.com/handyman5/acd_fuse https://github.com/handyman5/acd_fuse still works. a FUSE interface would be much more convenient than any desktop client.

johnchristopher 12y ago

Dropbox user experience hasn't changed that much over the years. Amazon, Google and MS are after users to absorb them into their other products and then merge or drop those products years letter. My Dropbox account still works the same after all those years, I can't say the same of Google Drive/Doc SkyDrive/OneDrive/LiveMesh/etc. > It's the whole Jobs thing with 'you're a feature, not a product.' I'd turned that the other way. Dropbox is a product while Google, MS and Amazon's dropbox-like offers are a side-feature of other business. edit: Then there is the `brand` argument. Dropbox is solid. Note: I am not convinced those arguments are valid in the business space but this is how I think it pans out for most `standard` users (free and paying).

higherpurpose 12y ago

Dropbox, which has its whole business around selling storage, unlike companies like Amazon and Google, who also want to mine your data, could offer end-to-end encryption for the files like Spideroak. Of course, I can't imagine its most influential board member, Condoleezza Rice, will ever agree to that.

lsaferite 12y ago
Well, since the ACS API is open, why couldn't you just write a client that encrypts your data as well?

randall 12y ago

They already have network effects. I wouldn't underestimate those. Also startups are rarely zero sum, so for Dropbox to be successful™ it doesn't have to absolutely murder the competition, just be significant enough that the competition doesn't murder it.

josho 12y ago
To expand on that, the primary network effect that I see are applications integrating into the dropbox storage system. Smart move by Dropbox. I wonder if Amazon can somehow leverage their own network effects into this product. e.g. Lots of content is already stored in S3.

eloisant 12y ago

The problem is not Dropbox being "a feature, not a product". It's a perfectly fine product, but it's hard to compete with products given away as loss leaders by companies who have other sources of revenue.

danieldk 12y ago
That's why people should stick with Dropbox (or others like SpiderOak). Because the companies who give it away as loss leaders will probably neglect their products or index your data for advertising, etc. (Perhaps with the exception of Microsoft, who seem to want to sell Office with OneDrive.)
- niels_olson 12y ago
  > Perhaps with the exception of Microsoft, who seem to want to sell Office with OneDrive. I think this may be the most prescient comment here. I wonder if Dropbox and Microsoft may start looking more and more alike. MSFT with a OS as a side business and Dropbox with an office suite as a side business.

rattray 12y ago

It'll be tough for Dropbox. I imagine the #1 thing they have going for them is a strong consumer-facing brand and a bunch of existing customers (who are likely still telling their friends to download Dropbox, though who knows how fast). I also suspect they're working on a full office suite - they acquired Mailbox and Hackpad more recently. Amazon doesn't have much strength as a consumer-facing tech brand, afaict. As a developer, I trust S3. But as a consumer, do I trust Amazon's software to be usable or reliable? I'm not so sure. Still, long-term, I find it hard to see things panning out for good ol DBX without something big coming out soon...

phamilton 12y ago

Do we know for a fact that Dropbox is still just am S3 reseller? I would be very surprised if that were still true.

stingraycharles 12y ago
Well the data is hosted on s3.amazonaws.com at least once, judging by the urls. So they either use it as a complement, or exclusively.
vidarh 12y ago
It appears to be true, though I'd imagine they're getting very substantial discounts from Amazon. Otherwise it'd be far cheaper for them to self-host at their scale.
- semerda 12y ago
  If that's true wouldn't it make sense for Dropbox to form some sort of a a whitelabel partnership with Amazon? Building cross platform reliable software to sync and method of storing data (ie. avoiding duplicates et al) is still an important piece in creating a smooth user experience while minimizing cost on the storage side.

beambot 12y ago

Dropbox should convert their storage backend to a single account on Amazon's new "unlimited" service so that their per-user hosting costs are approximately nil... ;-) Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1499/ http://xkcd.com/1499/

andrewaylett 12y ago
https://xkcd.com/908/ https://xkcd.com/908/

jkmcf 12y ago

Dropbox has great integration on mobile apps. I don't recall more than a few of my apps having integration beyond Dropbox and iCloud. I don't know about Android, but I really hope iOS moves towards a generic cloud storage interface so that competitors can more easily get traction, but I know this isn't in Apple's interest.

semerda 12y ago

How about their MBaaS? I'm a fan of their Datastore API. Would welcome Dropbox expanding their apps ecosystem support.

sschueller 12y ago

One word: pre-install Dropbox is pre-installed on a lot of samsung smartphones and can not be removed. This removes the hurdle for people who don't know much about cloud storage from picking one. Although I consider this bloatware it appears to be a very good marketing strategy.

notatoad 12y ago
Not for long. The new Galaxy S6 has OneDrive pre-installed instead of DropBox, and samsung has indicated that the rest of their lineup will be going this way too. And of course, all new windows computers come with OneDrive pre-installed as well. I think HTC is the only OEM still pre-installing DropBox.

yalogin 12y ago

I don't understand how Google and Microsoft let Dropbox (and Box) to gain any market share at all. It's poor execution from both these giants, particularly Google. I am surprised Dropbox was able to grow for this long.

hyperbovine 12y ago

The fact that people think Dropbox is so vulnerable tells me how secure they really are as a leader in this space. Let me explain. Dropbox works so beautifully and transparently that people mistakenly assume that what they are doing must be easy. (Netflix suffers / benefits from a similar fallacy with respect to streaming.) In reality, distributed storage and sync is quite a challenging engineering problem, which Dropbox has about a 10 year jump on solving. There is a notorious surfeit of brilliant engineers at Google, but have you actually used Google Drive? I tried it when it came out and it crashed at least once a day. Maybe it's gotten better since, but so has Dropbox. Overcoming these technical deficits is really hard and expensive (just look at Apple Maps) and often painful for the end user. I wouldn't write Dropbox off just yet. Also, with the forthcoming IPO it's conceivable that they will start to build out their own data centers.

sangnoir 12y ago
I highly doubt that Dropbox has a 10 year head-start (over Google and Amazon) in the area of "distributed storage and sync" - unless you meant it in the narrow case of building desktop sync clients.

choppaface 12y ago

Dropbox can still win. First, have you tried the Cloud Drive UI? It's barely hackathon-level quality. They have basic photo browsing, which is nice, but the Dropbox UX is orders of magnitude better at the time of writing. Second, a lot of people use Dropbox to share files. Amazon's service is currently about back-ups. They're somewhat different use cases, and sharing is arguably a harder problem than backup because the sharing experience must have much less friction to succeed. So Dropbox is already years ahead of Amazon in this regard. Third, storage at scale is still much cheaper than what anybody is charging. A 4U of RAID 5 SATA drives costs quite a bit less than Amazon's $59/yr/TB price point. (I know Cloud Drive is "unlimited" at that price, but survey data suggest to me most users have less than 1TB of data or unwilling to upload that much). While Dropbox purportedly uses S3 heavily, S3 is about $360/yr/TB. Clearly Dropbox must have storage hedged with something else to back their Pro service (even if that tech is still under development). Dropbox can, with high probability, meet Amazon's offering here, and they'll likely blow Amazon's UX out of the park.