Comment by jamwt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jamwt | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a sync quality engineer at Dropbox--on the team that writes and maintains the sync engine. So caveat, I'm clearly quite biased. :-)

> They don't do anything that their competitors (OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, etc.) don't do better.

I'm not sure on what you base this opinion. We do sync much, much better, and that's no coincidence--we work very hard on it (I'm new on this team, so I deserve essentially zero personal credit). It is our business. We're not an advertising company--doing sync well translates directly to dollars for us.

On a technical level, it is extremely nontrivial to get right multiplatform, in the face of races, vague filesystem semantics, application-specific behavior, offline, etc. Our competitors aren't even trying things like infinite (https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/04/announcing-projec...).

We're not sitting still, though. We're actually building a next generation sync engine right now (btw, more Rust @ Dropbox). The plan is that this will put even more distance between us and others.

As a happy user I second this. I've never been let down by their sync -- set it and forget it.

Also: thank you for Linux support :)

I would add:

* They only offer one service. I consider this a feature: they're not off building smart cars, they're not about to release a Dropbox wearable.

* It's not tied to any platform (Microsoft, Apple, Google). It's their core product. They have to be dependable.

* They charge money. None of my folders are brought to me by coca-cola. They're not "Sorted based on intelligent algorithms". And never has Dropbox prompted me with "Check out what documents are trending with your friends!"

* They don't encourage me to just keep everything "on the cloud". All my data is still on my devices.

It's a solid, dead simple, stable product that I hope never goes away.

There are definitely some interesting features in development. Things like placeholders (infinite) have been in OneDrive for a while (then removed because Microsoft) and then were reintroduced. I remember a few years ago a company I was working for used dropbox and I was shocked when installing DropBox instantly depleted my local storage - it felt totally bizarre that infinite functionality wasn't the default as that was what I was used to with OneDrive.

I'd like to see some evidence that sync is actually better in a significant way that is noticeable to the user - noticeable enough to warrant an incredible premium. For example, $10/month or $100/year gets me full office for my entire home and mobile, 1TB of storage, and Skype minutes (not that anyone cares about that perk). If its just for one person, that goes down to $7/month or $70/year. Why should I pay $10/month for just 1Tb of storage and slightly better sync?

EDIT: After reading some other comments, I see some evidence that your syncing is in fact better. It might be useful to highlight that specifically rather than making the blanket statement (e.g. faster, more robust rather than better). Now I might take a look at dropbox especially as my reliance on Office is decreasing.

> Things like placeholders (infinite)

Yep, we're definitely aware of MS's placeholders. Infinite is different in several key ways, not the least of which is that it is cross-platform. And doing this well on Mac is particularly tricky.

More detail on the tech blog:

https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/05/going-deeper-with-pro...

I like this response. It seems like jamwt is actually trying pretty hard not to be biased. If I were at Dropbox, I'd probably also want to point out that just about every competitor that's been listed here is a Dropbox copycat. On the other hand, we all know that great copycats come along all the time and do something new much better than the original. The real question about the value proposition for Dropbox is how its value proposition stacks up against competitors. I can't speak to Box and I don't think OneDrive has much going for it beyond being attached to the Microsoft ecosystem (which makes it the default winner for a whole bunch of Microsoft-oriented people and companies and the opposite for just about everyone else). On the other hand, Google Docs, Spreadsheets, etc., gives Google Drive a really strong position for eating into Dropbox. I haven't made up my mind yet - I've found a lot I don't like about Dropbox, but I've also found Google Drive to be riddled with problems, both from a UX standpoint and in terms of the basic architectural layout. If Dropbox does the right things over time, they can continue to offer the best value in the market - I'm just not sure I've seen them doing that recently.

I'm quite heavy user, about 100GB data, some hundred k files, constantly synching software projects over 3-4 machines and also work with those on different machines. Since I got rid of too long paths, there has been zero problems with sync. It just works and it is fast.

My only complaints currently are the slow initial sync and the stuff infinite will fix.

For professional use I don't see the price as a problem. For personal use I would love some "cold storage" with cheaper per GB price, but familiar interface (just drop pictures to some folder and they would disappear from disk and end up in storage).

With the Dropbox brand there might be more opportunities in business world. Companies are for example still moving lots of stuff via (S)FTP.

Just want to note that only Dropbox seems to be able to handle multiple (as in, a dozen) git repos...... the linux client runs a little hot on the memory while it scans the full list, but it actually syncs in a reasonable amount of time without crashing. Which is more than I can say about OneDrive and Google Drive...

So, thanks for that :)

Aren't you afraid that once a good standard exists for file syncing, which every OS then implements, dropbox will lose its business case?

Are you really proposing that a universal file syncing protocol which must be implemented across all OSes for every FS will eat Dropbox's lunch?

General, aren't you afraid that once all the governments of the world agree to unify and eliminate all conflict, you'll be out of a job?

First of all, they've had a pretty good run so far, so the bet against that seems to have worked out.

Also, changing markets are part of the difficulty for almost all businesses. Apple would have been in serious peril of losing the business case of their ipods once everyone else was making cheaper devices with all of ipod functionality (plus phone calls!); fortunately they adapted.

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