I think the best example is when Dropbox was announced and how many people scoffed at the triviality of cloning data around.
Serious question - hasn't it? I know there are other players in the space, but it's absolutely the #1 solution I think of.
Easy peasy.
I'm not saying that's the case here. Maybe their business is actually a widget. I'm saying that most businesses do far more than you can see from the outside.
Dropbox addresses a real problem, it's just that the triviality of a business copying it means it became table stakes on a lot of platforms.
To be clear, my expected rate of problems for this functionality is “never.” The only service I have that experience with is Dropbox. With GDrive and One Drive I have seen folders lose sync, files get stuck syncing, and inexplicable conflicts.
In addition, sharing outside my org is way easier and more reliable with Dropbox.
I agree that copying files around seems like it should be trivial. Somehow it’s not, though. I don’t have an explanation, just observations from trying to get real work done on a Mac.
The magic of DropBox was that non-technical users could just share that word document, have it everywhere and not have to deal with a weird terminal.
I wished Drobox built a (physicals, why not) wall at their HQ with the names of everyone who was able to miraculously recover their masters/phd thesis after hardware failure because they saved it in their Dropbox folder.
Is it the UI? Is it keeping your data safe? Is it the sync?
I never used their native applications because I hate constant syncing for no reason and running proprietary apps (especially if they're always on), but I use some of their free tiers to store stuff.
If I had to pay I'd just buy some space on some server at the cheapest price per gb there is.
This. Whenever someone quips "that's a feature not a product" the reply should be "so why were they able to ship this feature and you weren't". Technical debt, opportunity cost(s), mission focus are all opportunities for arbitrage.
Being able to breakout of that feature product into an expanded ecosystem before your product becomes a feature of a bigger platform is the real end game.