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Comment by wrsh07 | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox must have many more corp customers than evernote, no?

I am sure. However, like evernote the difficult problem they solved several years ago is no longer difficult, but quite easy and become much more cheap. Couple that with security and privacy risks and the value proposition changes quickly.

Maybe they are gearing up for a google merger or something. They are doing their mailbox app which looks cool and integrates storage and syncing. However, once again

1. Why would I use a mail client that only interfaces with gmail and outlook?

2. What is the point of the sync, this is default by most mail providers and clients?

3. Why would I want mail storage? I actually don't know what my mailbox limit is, but I certainly would not want to have the amount of .txt documents that could fill that up. Also, this is basic functionality. You can't pull me on your platform, google has the users you want and are better positioned, I still don't understand how you make money as a company.

When did file sync become easy? I agree it's become commonplace with Google Drive and iCloud bringing respectable implementations to market, but I think it's still far from easy.

It's easy from a consumer point of view in the sense that it's readily available and easy to set up. The fact that it is still technically difficult to set up from scratch doesn't matter to consumers (or businesses) when there are multiple providers that hide that complexity for the end user. Hence Dropbox no longer has a competitive advantage from having produced a solid solution to a difficult problem.

Right, except the stories of data loss are an order of magnitude more common with Google Drive and iCloud compared to Dropbox, so even though at the surface level it may be a classic market for lemons, I still think Dropbox has a competitive advantage based on their reputation.

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