Apple Tries To Acquire Dropbox for $800 Million, Dropbox Refuses | Hacker News Reader

Apple Tries To Acquire Dropbox for $800 Million, Dropbox Refuses

chiphazard.com

66 pointsdanest32 comments

Dropbox would really not be a good fit for Apple anyways. I can't see Apple allowing them to continue offering their current product, considering that (a) Apple likes to brand things as Apple, (b) they are very focused on cross-platform capability, which includes Apple's primary competitors of Windows, Linux, Android, and BlackBerry, and (c) Apple's vision for iCloud is quite different than what Dropbox offers (though it may not be too different than what Dropbox dreams of).

More likely, if Apple had acquired Dropbox it would be to funnel Dropbox's talent off to the iCloud team and let Dropbox itself wither away, in which case it was very wise of Dropbox to refuse.

On the other hand, Dropbox has been stagnating despite its success. For example: how long will it take for Dropbox to allow read-only sharing on Dropbox volumes? Not to mention their facepalm-worthy security blunders this year.

if Apple had acquired Dropbox it would be to funnel Dropbox's talent off to the iCloud team and let Dropbox itself wither away

That would be the most expensive talent acquisition at $800 million.

    > if Apple had acquired Dropbox it would be to funnel 
    > Dropbox's talent off to the iCloud team and let 
    > Dropbox itself wither away

What talent? If Apple had attempted to purchase Dropbox, it's because Dropbox has become the de facto filesystem for iOS devices, and virtually every iOS application that requires file system support of some kind already supports Dropbox.

It should be obvious why that's valuable to Apple. They have an iCloud-like service that is very simple to use and is already supported by virtually all iOS developers.

Slam dunk.

Have you looked at the iCloud API docs? It's a very different beast indeed than Dropbox.

Look towards the end. They claim Dropbox has received $4 billion in a recent round of funding.

Don't think they have a clue what's going on.

Dropbox has received a total of $7.2 million according to CrunchBase.

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/dropbox

Perhaps you meant to reference their valuation when they last took money?

http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/30/index-leads-4-billion-valua...

So, essentially the Apple board of directors thinks the privelege of being Apple employees is worth about $3.2 Billion.

No, the $800M offer was at some point in the past, presumably when Dropbox was much smaller than it is now.

Anywhere else reporting this story? Chip Hazard doesnt exactly seem credible.

The original source of this rumor was BusinessInsider

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-gossip-on-apples-80...

ChipHazard crappily didn't link to the origin of the rumor.

Whenever reading that site: Remember the founder and head honcho was banned from the securities industry.

For extra amusement, read his POS memo and remember the widows and orphans that live more poorly as a consequence of his guidance.

Agreed. Phrases like "Dropbox has many client softwares..." and "A very handsome revenue..." don't exactly fill me with confidence about the author of this piece.

> After having gained around $4 billion in a round of funding

Uh?

Dropbox is said to be receiving a $4 billion valuation in its latest round of funding--not a $4 billion investment.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2942472

Even so, at a $4B valuation, Apple was only offering 20%. Try getting your new investors to swallow that pill.

I believe this is referring to their valuation during the most recent round of funding.

What exactly does dropbox offer that apple's iCloud won't bring to the table? (not to criticize dropbox, but it would seem relatively easy for apple to replicate)

iCloud currently doesn’t offer anything that Dropbox offers. Dropbox currently doesn’t offer anything that iCloud offers. iCloud and Dropbox are different products with very little overlap.

There certainly is a Dropbox shaped hole in iCloud. (I will not dare and claim that there is an iCloud shaped hole in Dropbox. iCloud didn’t even have a chance to be successful yet and Dropbox is very successful without anything iCloud offers.)

Now, I have been thinking that Apple’s long term plan is to get rid of the file system (as something the user has to deal with). iCloud and even more so iOS are steps in that direction. Even Apple, however, has to acknowledge that there will at least be a transitional period between now and that future. That’s where the Dropbox shaped hole comes in. Dropbox is (currently) all about the filesystem: There is this folder and you can stick anything at all in it to get it synced across your devices and to be able to access it from the web.

Dropbox has that implemented perfectly. I don’t know whether Apple could copy that. I personally never used it but people have been telling me that iDisk (which was conceptually pretty similar to Dropbox) sucked.

Still, it would be weird for Apple to go off in a direction like that. Not sure whether they are willing to, well, more or less backtrack with iCloud (back to the filesystem).

Their folder sharing?

When I heard that Dropbox had raised a very large round, my first thought was that Apple or MSFT was trying to buy them up, since both are trying to kick-start their cloud storage offerings.

IMHO, its too bad, since I would of really loved to have seen Dropbox more tightly integrated into iOS. (iCloud will be and it might be my replacement for Dropbox). Though for sharing, I don't think iCloud will have those features for a while.

"IMHO, its too bad, since I would of really loved to have seen Dropbox more tightly integrated into iOS. "

As a user of Windows, Linux and Android all I can say is "thank fucking god". It would have destroyed a perfectly good cross-platform product.

As a user of Windows, Linux and Android all I can say is "thank fucking god". It would have destroyed a perfectly good cross-platform product.

As a user of OS X and an iPhone, I had the same reaction. One nice thing about Dropbox is that it just works with all my Windows-using friends. It just works through a browser interface. I obviously like some Apple products enough to use them, but I too would hate to see Dropbox acquired by the company. I don't think it would be as bad as Cisco's acquisition of Flip (http://jseliger.com/2011/05/08/will-we-ever-find-out-what-ha...), but I can't imagine such a thing turning out well for Dropbox or for users.

"After having gained around $4 billion in a round of funding" haha a _little_ typo there. I'm waiting for a real news outlet to announce this rumour.

I'm somewhat disappointed, personally. One really impressive thing about Apple has been their restraint in purchasing companies. It just seems like so many of their competitors acquire for the oddest reasons. Dropbox, while a solid product, does not strike me as something Apple couldn't pull off on its own.

It's not just about the product, but rather all the users that come with it.

I bet Amazon has also tried to acquire Dropbox on more than one occasion. And that would seem to be a more reasonable acquisition. Clearly dropbox has a vision for its own success though.

Seems like a fair price for a small IT company with a single product and an unpopular subscription model, but in today's market Dropbox should be able to get a better deal.

I don't know how unpopular it is but I'm paying for the cheapest one and I haven't regretted it yet. Indeed they could release more features and blah blah blah but we gotta admit that dropbox's great thing is the fact that it just works.

That's really too bad, Apple could've forced Dropbox to shape up privacy and security wise and actually made it into something pretty cool.

I like that the GNU/Linux client is not an after-thought. Had Dropbox been acquired by Apple, I don't think the long-term prospects of the Dropbox client on non-Apple platform would be as good as they are now. Uniform features and simulatneous release? Integration of Dropbox with iCloud on all platforms?

That's a really good point, but I'd prefer a poorly supported but secure version to a great GNU/Linux client with owners that lie about their ability to view your files.

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