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Comment by pyrrhotech | Hacker News Reader

I'd be shocked if Dropbox is still in business in 5 years. It's kind of sad because it was the first mover and I loved the service when it was the only one, but now there are a million options that are probably just as good. Not to mention they've never made a dime on me personally or anyone I know (and as I understand it that's true for 95% of their user-base). Our company actually banned Dropbox.com because we decided we'd rather do everything on Google drive for free instead of pay Dropbox for corporate use. The whole industry also has bearish macro outlook as storage continues to get cheaper and yet people's need for it doesn't grow proportionately.

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but now there are a million options that are probably just as good

Few of them have block-level sync or LAN sync. In practice, Dropbox is often much faster than alternatives, especially when syncing/modifying large files.

The only programs that are better at it are Bittorrent Sync and SyncThing. And they are specifically made for peer to peer syncing.

Yeah, I was sold on Dropbox the first time I stood up a machine and it synced a couple of GB in a few minutes. After scratching my head because my broadband isn't that fast, I realized it had quietly sideloaded the data from my other signed-in box on the network. That was pretty spiffy.

I think you make some interesting points, but I'm not convinced that I agree with all of them.

> I'd be shocked if Dropbox is still in business in 5 years.

I agree that Google Drive, iCloud, Amazon Cloud Drive, Box, etc. are all viable competitors. But (admittedly, anecdotally) everyone I talk to seems to use Dropbox. Personally, I use it on all of my devices.

I also use Box for business-related storage, and Google Drive for presentations, documents, etc. I use Amazon Prime Photos to store my photo roll. I don't think that any of those detract from Dropbox's primary use case of sharing files between different machines. I don't think people think of Dropbox as "cloud storage," but instead as a way to move files back and forth and have constant availability on machines they use.

> Our company actually banned Dropbox.com

I work in information security, and although I haven't banned Dropbox from a network layer, I can certainly relate to the sentiment. You have to remember that it's not just corporate use that caused the Dropbox ban -- your sysadmins also don't want people putting work documents in Dropbox to work on from home, because so many people already use Dropbox in their personal lives. The fact that your organization blocked Dropbox, instead of just saying "we use Google Drive," speaks to the fact that so many people are already happy Dropbox users and would just as soon continue to use it.

That said, I agree with you wholeheartedly that Dropbox, if going for major corporate adoption, will fail in its endeavor. I don't think that Google Drive is the primary competitor -- in my opinion, it's Box. Yes, you have to actually pay for Box, but in many corporate environments, that's not really much of an issue.

Said another way, I predict Dropbox failing in a corporate environment for the same reason they will continue to succeed with personal users: businesses want "cloud storage," and personal users want "easy file share with myself."

Maybe I'll look back on this comment in a few years and see that I was dead wrong, but for now that's where I'd put my money.

I suppose my point is more that it's great for personal use, but they've failed to monetize that aspect and AFAIK their primary monetization strategy is corporate which I agree will fail. In other words, I don't think success in the consumer space will be enough to sustain the company. Perhaps they won't completely fail--I could see them being acquired, but it would definitely be under even their valuation raised 2 years ago. Drew Houston and the early VCs will still make out like bandits, but the workers won't get much for their stock options.

Dropbox will be in business by acquisition. How about Microsoft acquiring dropbox? Their onedrive is not as good as dropbox and will surely help in their cause.

Apple. Please Apple. Replace your iCloud abomination with Dropbox when the time comes.

"In 2009, Steve Jobs wanted to pay more than a hundred million dollars for Dropbox. As Houston later told Forbes’ Victoria Barret, when he politely turned down his hero’s offer, Jobs declared that Dropbox was a feature, not a product."

https://pando.com/2012/02/26/steve-jobs-was-right-dropbox-is...

Thanks for the link. I recall when that initially occurred. I'm going to get a chuckle if it ever goes through, vindicating Jobs posthumously.

That acquisition would've sucked for non-Apple dropbox users.

>Replace your iCloud abomination with Dropbox when the time comes.

Sure, but if they did who says they will let you write files directly to Dropbox?

They'll probably have you store your stuff in a hundred different crappy SQLLite databases tied to iNamed applications on your phone and Macbook, just like they do now.

If Microsoft and Apple weren't able to build good alternatives, what makes people think that they won't fuck up an acquisition? Clearly storage for them isn't a priority. So I don't get it. But then I wasn't much into sports either.

Building something is hard. Writing a check is easy. Apple could easily make the payout contingent on a smooth integration. Apple could even have a foreign subsidiary purchase Dropbox, thereby allowing for full use of its external profits it hasn't brought back to the US due to taxes.

That's the benefit of cash. It solves almost every problem.

They have rules to prevent this. See IRC Section 956. In essence, the use of a foreign sub to acquire a US company would be treated as a deemed dividend back to Apple.

Today I learned! Thank you for sharing!

I'm not a tax expert, but I think dropbox would have to be a foreign company in order for them to purchase it with foreign cash and avoid tax problems.

Apple would effectively be shifting the tax burden onto Dropbox, since it would be up to Dropbox to repatriate the funds.

I pay for Dropbox, and their sync is the industry's best.

They'll be here in 5. 10 is the bigger question mark when files go away.

Files will never go away.

Probably not for 'power' (does that work?) users, but for people like my mom they're pretty much already gone. They started disappearing for her when iTunes was dumping her music into a directory and she had no idea, to her it was indistinguishable from how Spotify works, so now that everything streams like magic she pays zero attention to files or the idea of files. She thinks in terms of galleries, not image files. If I open some sort of file explorer in front of her, I've just gotten 'techy' on her.

A few years ago when I was doing a help desk job, the sentiment was similar. I asked a user to navigate to a directory on Windows and he stopped me. He said, "Hold it now, I'm not a computer person."

So maybe not 'go away,' but perhaps become increasingly invisible and especially so to average users.

But manual file management might. Dropbox is about creating folders and organizing file in there.

> when files go away.

Can you expand on that? What do you see replacing files?

i suppose that once every software comes from the cloud and their data is stored in the cloud as well, you'll barely "see" your files anymore.

but i don't think it will happen anytime soon. even on iOS, i often find the need to make data backups using files.

Data backups of what?

iCloud backs up your entire phone. Most apps store stuff remotely on their servers. And even in the case of photos various services will sync those off your phone as well.

Everything is shifting to mobile and web, and we don't have files on mobile or web.

> we don't have files on mobile or web

Iphone user spotted.

On my Android I have a full file system, with files, and I intend to keep it that way.

I agree but it's from mismanagement/sprawl/lack of focus rather than poor macros. If storage costs and storage needs are really going down then I would be much more likely to use a cloud storage service. I would much rather have some "it just works" cloud magic but as it is right now they are just not economical for individual users. Are storage costs really decreasing? There haven't been any price drops on consumer HDs in years and I don't recall any S3 price drops recently...

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