Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over? | Hacker News Reader

Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over?

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264 pointsbane215 comments

When I was in YC (same batch as Dropbox) this was a constant question. "What happens to Dropbox if Gdrive launches?" I don't actually remember what Drew and Arash thought, but a lot of people speculated on it.

It was probably a real threat to them 4.5 years ago. I can't imagine it is now. Dropbox has a large, happy fanbase that's going to keep using it and keep spreading. They're going to keep growing. They've got a small bit of lock-in if you use them a lot too, the annoyance of having to upload a large amount of files to another service. They've got a product that's a joy to use, which is not something Google is known for building outside of their core competency of search.

If I were Dropbox I'd simply view this as market validation (not that they need it at this point) more than anything else.

> If I were Dropbox I'd simply view this as market validation

And if I were Dropbox, I'd worry like hell. Google isn't depending on making GDrive profitable from fees, so they can literally give it away.

Indeed. Competition on this market space is almost guaranteed to be a race to the bottom. Dropbox will have to respond by concentrating on features to set itself apart.

They should concentrate on making users really happy. Features may or may not figure in there.

It would be pretty tough to compete with an over 10,000 engineer company with incredible building blocks on features.

That headcount is part of the reason it's easier to compete with Google.

The design of the Google organization rewards micro-optimizations (use data for every decision, or else your ass isn't covered) and risk-aversion (set low KPI's and game them to get the biggest bonus each quarter).

By contrast, the design of the innovation space in general rewards peak-jumping, risk-taking, and a healthy blend of intuition and data. And it already selected Dropbox.

Don't get me wrong, the (layers and layers of) leadership at Google want to make killer products. But at the level of the lowly implementer, not only is making killer products only a peripheral concern, but those who can and want to make killer products tend to self-select out of Google.

I can think of one huge feature: not giving all your personal data to the same company.

That's how Microsoft won the browser wars few years ago.

You lost me. MS put out a product for free that was competing with other products for free. Are you really saying that is the situation here?

Netscape initially charged for the browser.

"Netscape Navigator was not free to the general public until January 1998"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape

Good example. MS successfully killed off Netscape (the company) within a few years by bundling an inferior browser. It also prevented them from entering desktop OS, which was perceived as a threat back in the day.

Edit: FYI, Mosaic was the one I had in mind, which was free.

In it's day, IE was not an inferior browser. Quiet the opposite, actually.

"In it is day, IE was not an inferior browser. [Making little or no noise] the opposite, actually."

Putting aside the snarky remark about IE's apparent target audience, there are any number of contemporary sources which give examples of how your intended statement is factually incorrect.

For example: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/v-e.pdf

Personally, I started out as a Netscape for Windows user thinking Microsoft had no chance of catching up to a competitor as nimble as Netscape. IE 1.0 was awful (basically a rebrand of an outdated Spyglass Mosaic), IE2 was a little better but still grossly inadequate, IE3 was just fine, but there was no reason to switch, and IE4 was legitimately better (in my opinion) than Netscape was at the time. (Helped by the fact that Netscape 4.x was a bloated mess.)

There is plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree, but my conversion circa IE4 was not an outlying datapoint.

I started out as a Netscape for Mac user. I stayed that way until there was a viable alternative, and that alternative was never IE, no matter how much Steve Jobs stood on stage and said he loved it.

Really? I thoguh IE5 was a really solid browser on the mac.

IE on mac was created by a different team, and was very different form IE on Windows. It was a popular browser.

I have still to find anyone who actually used any of the IEs that MS released for Unix.

That may be true for the Mac, but the vast majority of users were on Windows. And on Windows, IE would have won the browser wars on its own merits without Microsoft's dirty tricks. As the GP said - IE3 was better than Netscape 3 and IE4 was streets ahead. Netscape 4 was the worst release of a major browser that I've seen.

IE3 was horrendous. The tide only turned with the release of IE4.

IE4, I believe, was the first version included in the OS or came in automatically with updates. I think IE3 came in one of those internet startup kits.

I know that it was supposed to cost money but I have never met anyone, outside of corporations, that actually paid for Navigator. My ISP included it in their software packet, my school had it readily available.

I think they were doing "free for noncommercial uses" license because most of the people I knew then I wouldn't consider a software pirate.

I still have my Netscape Navigator 3 box, manual and floppies that I bought from my local computer shop back in 1996.

No, I think he's saying that MS put out a browser bundled with every windows computer sold, so that was what dominated. Now google can do something similar in leveraging its existing userbase (everyone with a google account) to drive adoption of gdrive (ala google+). You won't have to sign up for something new... it'll already be waiting for you.

Not to mention, MS made a (then) superior product. I agree, the analogy doesn't work.

You'd be surprised how difficult "giving it away" can be, even for Google. Google succeeded big on giving away email, search, and androids. Do I need to list up all the acquisitions and products that even with a mortal lock on navigation on the Internet Google couldn't convince people was worth at least $0?

That would actually be a very interesting list. Hard to complete exhaustively, but a few relevant examples would be great!

Google Video (rescued by throwing a few billion at the competitor who was running away with the space), Lively (its like IMVU except without the users), Dodgeball, Wave, Google Page Creator (its like Weebly except without the users), Orkut (debatable whether one can put it in the failure column for not being FB but it certainly isn't FB), etc, etc.

But Google 'gives everything away' (with indirect monetisation), both the products that succeed and the products that fail. So in that sense this is just a list of failed products which are the byproduct of innovation at such a scale, rather than an indication of what has worked and what has not for Google in the past. Surely in this case, going up against a competitor that needs to charge, Google would be at a massive advantage (legality aside) by not having to charge?

Dropbox can take the approach of not worrying if they want. Standing on years of head start perhaps.

However: File sync strikes me as a lot closer to email than <insert failed acquisition here>.

Additionally, it seems logical to build/ship GDrive right into android.

I say again: I'd worry like hell.

Agreed. File sharing is the type of thing where you can't just rely on first-mover-advantage. Google has the ability and infrastructure to offer more space for free on more devices and platforms.

File sharing is the type of thing where you can't just rely on first-mover-advantage.

Yes, especially in a market where there are many, many users of computers who might have occasion to share files who have not used (or even heard of) any of the available file-sharing solutions yet. I am a sporadic user of Dropbox strictly for back-up of documents I produce, and a moderately frequent user of Google Docs for collaborative editing who knows a lot of other Google Docs users. I could see Google making huge gains in market share, turning it into tomorrow's "first mover" from the point of view of most users, for a file-sharing service.

I didn't get why Dropbox was so popular when I was using it the same way you are right now. Okay, it's a convenient way to make backups, but so what?

Then I started using it for sharing. Man, it's magic - I've never had it be so painless to share things. I can put a folder in my dropbox, share it to a few emails, and then everyone just has it later in the day. Man, that's cool. I can also create unlimited of those folders easily to control who gets what documents/files. It's a bloody miracle, Dropbox is. The backup feature is really second fiddle to sharing, it's just to make it useful enough for you to try it before you need to share, so that you discover sharing and fall in love with the product.

Dropbox was not the first mover [1]. In fact, their entrance into the market for cloud storage/sync is in a way analogous to Google's entrance into search.

You're second point sounds right. But to me, Dropbox has always been about the UX and convenience rather than the cost / space.

I think it will be interesting to see what Google launches.

[1] See this slide for CEO Drew Houston's humorous take on this: http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lesson...

Dropbox's success isn't about hardware. The interface is the product.

And really it's their lack of an interface--it just works.

I WISH I could remember who said it, but I applies here and in so many other areas: You must offer the consumer something MUCH better than what they already have to get them to switch from something they like. Google Maps dis this when Mapquest was the standard.

Does GDrive do that? Not yet.

I agree with what you wrote mostly. What dropbox could do to mess up and give Google a chance to do something much better is this: don't give people more free space when the average user struggles with the 2GB limit. One of the things that made gmail a success was that hotmail and the rest cheaper out on space. People had to constantly clean up their 2MB mailboxes. Google might be able to do the same again if dropbox don't offer more space for free. But that would take away from their earnings, so it isn't an easy problem to solve.

"simplicity is the keynote of elegance"

If they have a decent business plan, some well thought out contingencies, and the ability/willingness to compete, they'll be fine for a while yet.

They have specific brand momentum (where Google's momentum is not specific to the product) which counts for a lot when dealing with the general public.

I wouldn't worry like hell. Though I would worry a healthy amount: I'd keeping a very close eye on how this pans out, and would re-double efforts to make sure I didn't fall behind on product development, quality and support.

Giving away a viable alternative to that which consumers are already paying for, however, is hard to imagine failing.

You can add Google Navigation and Google Voice to the list of successful products that match that description.

I agree. Just look at the way Google slowed down the incrementally increasing storage of Gmail. It's been some time but it's still lagging after they did a major "bump" some years back. There might be a lot of applause at the beginning but being able to knock Dropbox out of the game will take serious effort.

I think GDrive will help DropBox more by offloading their freeriders to Google. People seeking a better premium experience (and less risk of say losing all their GDrive contents because their Google+ got suspended) will likely find DropBox appealing once they realize the convenience of a service like this.

Google has given away lots of stuff without success. Worrying about a big competitor "crushing" you just because they announce a product is a sign of productitis. Symptoms include ignoring marketing, customer experience, and organizational focus.

Since it seems to be based on Google Documents, I think Dropbox will do just fine. There are few pages on the internet that I dislike more than the Google Documents start page. I actually feel annoyed every time I look at that auto generated shit list of files that is Google documents. It breaks every user interface convention for displaying a list of files. Navigating files is something I already know how to do, but Google is special and has figured out how to make it a chore.

FWIW, one of the reasons I like having a non Google service to hold some important files is in case I hit the Google black swan and get locked out of my gmail account. (I also backup my email regularly.) While integration would probably be convenient, I need to be able to keep working if I do get locked out.

> is in case I hit the Google black swan and get locked out of my gmail account.

Do you think fear of a Google black swan is enough of a selling point for dropbox to survive?

I wouldn't speculate on Dropbox surviving, but, no, it seems unlikely that this fear is big enough to be a factor.

Yes. That is the primary reason why I would pick Dropbox over Google.

FYI if you just set up a POP client you don't need to run a backup process for your gmail.

Is the risk higher to be locked out of Google than to be locked out of Dropbox?

I'd worry more about Bitcasa, because they are taking the same "ease of use" idea, but making it even easier and cheaper.

Google is not the best with marketing, I haven't heard of any friends using Google Deals instead of Groupon yet either.

I sign up for the beta and the first thing they do is try entice me to spam social network sites about their product (that I haven't tried) in exchange for a better place in line. Pass.

It seems like half the startups are taking this Launchrock-type approach these days, I'm not sure I'm a fan either but presumably it works.

Really, I'm being downvoted into troll territory? Does it help if I say I'm a paying Dropbox user? The community is definitely changing here over the years...

I would guess that Bitcasa is just not notable enough to be brought into Google/Dropbox thread. Not that it justifies downvoting you below 0.

Nice to see this guy back.

I pop in every few months. I made the mistake of hearing about the password recovery feature :)

You should do this a lot more often. I am sure lots of us enjoyed your writings/comments.

Considering that DropBox is building on Amazon cloud storage (S3) and Google have their native storage arrays, I'd be very worried, as Google can offer storage much cheaper.

If you check Google services (docs, mail), you get for just $5 -> 20GB of storage for a YEAR (or for $20 -> 80GB).

DropBox takes $9.99 a MONTH for 50GB, or around $120 a YEAR!

User lock-in is powerful, but if a competitor can offer a product for a magnitude less in price, I'd be friggin' worry my posterior off.

> Considering that DropBox is building on Amazon cloud storage (S3)

...which tells you the only logical acquirer. Any other will have a middleman of S3 to pay, which will make the financials not very sensible.

If GDrive releases and is viable, Dropbox should put on their best push-up bra and fishnets, and head over to seattle as soon as the mascara is dry.

Convenient as the other only logical acquirer is also in Seattle.

Do you see MS putting Amazon in their critical path? I easily picture Ballmer saying NFW, but would love to hear why MS would hand such power over to Amazon.

They're not exactly mortal enemies, other than when it comes to recruiting Seattle talent. Amazon's pricing is transparent and MS would probably plan to migrate it to their own data centers like they migrated Hotmail from Unix infrastructure, and probably lots of other products.

If Microsoft acquires they would move Dropbox to their own infrastructure, clearly.

I realise that it's not the most reliable source, but I read a rumour [1] that Apple offered $800m to acquire Dropbox and they declined. It's possible it simply wasn't enough, but perhaps they're not interested in selling.

[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/09/dropbox-may-have-decline...

Eh, going by the App Engine pricing nonsense, I wouldn't necessarily count on Google's current prices reflecting anything beyond "This sounds like a nice number." It's entirely possible that if people started using up more of their allocation (as they would with a Google Drive), the prices would skyrocket.

Dropbox usage for me at least is 100% passive, it's literally just an icon in the top right that I don't click or think about.

I don't know if that holds true for any significant number of Dropbox's users but pricing and additional functionality could easily make an equivalent service more attractive for my use case.

Hey, didn't you write a long blog post about quitting Hacker News? And changing your password to a random string of characters to avoid being lured back?

> They've got a small bit of lock-in if you use them a lot too, the annoyance of having to upload a large amount of files to another service.

If it works the same way as Dropbox, you'd just have to move files on your local machine from one shared directory to the other. Hell I wish all services were as easy.

> They've got a product that's a joy to use, which is not something Google is known for building outside of their core competency of search.

Google is known for getting minimalism which is the most important UI element.

> the annoyance of having to upload a large amount of files to another service.

I imagine you'd just enter your Dropbox password into a migration form and have everything seamlessly pulled in. In fact, Google might even let you sync back, but Dropbox could add it easily it if not. By nature these services have to inter-operate.

Dropbox's situation seems extremely precarious. Most users have less than 2 GB of data. That's not lock-in, that's a few minutes of moving. I have about 15.000 high-resolution tagged photos on flickr - that's lock-in.

Simplicity and transparency (from where I'm standing) seem like the things that helped Dropbox proliferate - no fuss, just a directory that syncs, but it also means they have no way to monetize their service (they haven't made a dime from me yet) and they provide no added value.

Now, consider my case. I don't even have to remove the Dropbox client. The folder is already mirrored on my computer, when I install the next version of Ubuntu I have to explicitly add the PPA and install the proprietary Nautilus extension. If I don't do that, I can just drag the folder to another service. At some point it's easier to quit than to continue using it, which is why I predict Dropbox is fucked once Google provides the same transparent syncing with added value of its services.

After Gdrive is out, DropBox will find it difficult to grow.

The thing about lockin might be true for existing DropBox users. But what If I am a new user and I am comparing Google and DropBox. Who do you think I will choose?

Also once google adds support to gdrive into all their existing offerings it will be difficult to compete with that.

Dropbox is a brilliant piece of software however it's hard to justify more than $10/month for backup as a consumer. Since 50Gb only now covers my photos and docs, doesn't cover my music and even my photo collection's needs trimming to fit I would move to GDrive very quickly rather than double that spend to get to the next tier.

I've long hoped that Dropbox would segment their pricing plans more. It's unsettling having an increasing volume of content not backed up and if GDrive really does deliver I would move to it. My loyalty is to DB and I've yet to be convinced on GDrive's usability but it doesn't make sense to pay an extra $100/year as a loyalty fee.

in the dropbox forums company representatives constantly comment that lower price plans are not feasible. That said, I've always been disappointed by companies that make you buy buckets of units (like postpaid cellphone plans) that they know you will never use rather than offering a per unit price. If the cost to provide 1gb of storage per month is higher than 10/50, than charge the higher price, don't hide it by shifting the cost of power users onto regular users.

I do believe them that lower prices are not feasible while they are reselling Amazon S3... this GDrive rumor might be the push Dropbox needs to bite the bullet and buy their own servers.

They definitely need to buy their own servers at some point in the future. I do remember storage is their main cost. With the big round they just closed, I can't imagine there's not a few engineers working on that already.

The guys know better than me but with all Amazon's price reductions, 100Gb/year comes to $44.40. There are transfer costs on top of that however there are no longer transfer fees IN to S3 and I would guess that the OUT bandwidth is primarily generated by a small number of files on your machine and probably stays pretty linear past a certain point.

I think those prices were the cheapest viable at the start but it feels like there are more competitive ones now (and that's assuming they're not building their own cheaper datacentres).

Unit costs don't work at small scale. For one thing, there's no single ideal unit: In reality, it's a multidimensional space. If you charge by unit bucket size the folks who constantly churn their files may eat you alive with bandwidth charges; if you charge by unit bandwidth folks may upload great gobs of data; if you charge for both bandwidth and storage people will get mightily confused and will tend leave your product for a competitor with a more predictable pricing model. ;)

Costs are also nonlinear. The most nonlinear are support costs. You may pay as much to support the user who pays $1 for your service as the user who pays $100. (Unless you keep a meter running and charge by the support-minute, which makes customers very unhappy.) And in practice it's even worse than that: Anecdotal evidence suggests that the customers who are obsessed with saving money cost more to support.

And let me emphasize that costs aren't even the key issue. Engineers tend to forget this, but the price of a product need have little to do with the cost of producing it. Products should be priced based on value to a customer, and that doesn't scale linearly either. The first few hundred MB of Dropbox are the most precious of all, partly because that's enough to sync my most critical and frequently-changing files, and partly because it includes the installation and setup overhead (and, probably, most of the support costs). Then the next few GB is somewhat less precious. By the time we reach a 49GB plan, the value-per-GB is significantly lower. I don't have 60GB of important stuff. Moreover, Dropbox is significantly less convenient when shlepping around huge amounts of data, because it's not magical: It takes time to sync all that stuff over my lame-O cable connection.

He's in a position to know, and I am not, but this surprises me.

Personally, I hesitate at $10 a month when I am currently using less than the 2GB of free space available. If there were a $5/month plan that was even minutely better than the free offering, I would sign up without a second thought. I suspect I am far from the only one in that position.

It is not "simply backup". They provide a user friendly synchronization service for files between all your devices. Sure, for simply stashing files there are much cheaper options such as Amazon S3 or simply a friend's linux box in his basement... but it is not entirely a fair comparison.

"They provide a user friendly synchronization service for files between all your devices."

....

And users!

For a small company who has a geographically dispersed user population, Dropbox is a great tool. The key is the dead simple setup and operation.

1) Install software

2) Use tool

Sharing folders is about three clicks from logging in to the website, and you can get there directly through shell (Explorer, Finder) integration in both PC and Mac.

That's (Explorer, Finder, Nautilus) in (Windows, Mac, Linux)

That's (Explorer, Finder, Dolphin, Nautilus) in (Windows, OS X, KDE, Gnome).

Or you could go with (Seafood) for (Linux) ;).

Seafood? Who eats dolphin or nautilus?

I don't know, the Chinese?

I take it you already have the "install software" and "use tool" steps out of the way, would you be interested in a web-based file-system, with tagging organization, as opposed to folder organization?

No. I just want a folder that syncs.

Not particularly. My users don't understand it. Google Apps has been fighting this for some time in both Gmail and Google Docs. Users are used to folders, but Google uses tags and collections. They used to call collections (Google Docs) folders, but the fact that a document could exist in two 'folders' confused the hell out of my users.

As it turns out, the benefits of a tagging based approach don't pay out nearly as much as the user training and maintenance costs.

I completely agree -it's not and that's what makes it magic.

However it's only not "simply backup" for about 10Gb of your files. For files you don't sync onto other machines it is by definition simply backup. Moreover it's the backup service that you're considering in your mind when weighing the buying decision of whether to spend an extra $100/year on it. It's not $100/year more of seamless multi-machine syncing.

I can only speak from my own experience but while, as a consumer it was the usability of the software that hooked me, it's the backup I pay for. That may not be the case for a business but it is for me.

For most people the barrier isn't cost, it's grasping the value of having backups in the first place. If using GDrive is even .000000000000001% harder than "save files in a folder", Dropbox has nothing to worry about.

I agree. I love DropBox (and happily pay the $100/yr fee), but at 50GB isn't not enough for my photos & music. They are going to need to be at least in the ballpark of Google's pricing.

If Google was $50/yr for 50GB I wouldn't switch. But if they are $20/yr for 50GB then I would seriously consider it.

As a rule of thumb, I try to rely on Google as little as possible for important services. I don't dislike Google, but their lack of customer service makes it risky to rely too heavily on their services. I use Dropbox for syncing and backup, and since I backup files that are important to me, that rules out Google Drive.

This. Unless Google suddenly become a lot more customer service focussed, I really have no intention of using their service to back up all my stuff.

If customer service is important to you, DropBox isn't a viable option either.

This is unexpected given their position on it before [1]:

Google was about to launch a project it had been developing for more than a year, a free cloud-based storage service called GDrive. But Sundar had concluded that it was an artifact of the style of computing that Google was about to usher out the door. He went to Bradley Horowitz, the executive in charge of the project, and said, “I don’t think we need GDrive anymore.” Horowitz asked why not. “Files are so 1990,” said Pichai. “I don’t think we need files anymore.” ... “You just want to get information into the cloud. When people use our Google Docs, there are no more files. You just start editing in the cloud, and there’s never a file.”

Are they admitting they were too ambitious? This seems to weaken the case for the mostly file-less ChromeOS and competes with their Google Storage offering.

[1] http://allthingsd.com/20110425/how-google-killed-gdrive-and-...

Excellent find. In my company we really don't have files: everything is "cloud" (we use Google Apps and a little of box.net) and that seems as a future.

If this is true, I will be a little irritated because Google is not fixing simple things in Google Docs (like that stupid thing that all new documents are immediately saved as "Untitled" without even asking me what would be a name of documents). Now they are building something completely unrelated to what they were telling us.

I love Dropbox and Google Drive would have a hard time getting me to switch. Dropbox seems to "get it" when it comes to simple, easy to use file synchronization.

The one area that GDrive might wiggle into is making it even easier to use Google Docs. I really like GDocs but I don't use them very much because its just not convenient to do so with local files. However, if I can "upload" a file to a directory on my machine and have it available in GDocs, that might turn the tide.

NOTE: One thing that Dropbox doesn't do well is file segregation; some files I want only on some machines. For example, I want me personal finance stuff on all my machines at home but not my work laptop. Or I want large ZIP archives on everything but my phone. Maybe GDrive will tackle this problem...

We could see much better syncing for Android devices for one. It would be nice if you could have the same kind of syncing that Chrome has when you log-in with your Google account, but for Android. So you could sync everything from SMS messages, photos, videos, documents, and even apps. When you buy a new Android phone, you would just login with the Gmail account, and everything would be there.

I really hope that's where they are going with this, and it's not just a rebranded Google Docs that allows you to store different file types.

They seem to be moving in that direction. The Google+ application on my phone offers instant uploading of pictures and videos to google+ already which I find rather useful.

One thing that Dropbox doesn't do well is file segregation

Dropbox does do that. In the preferences, each folder has a checkbox for "Sync this folder to this computer"; uncheck it and the folder won't be on that device. It's marginally clunky to set up since you have to do it for each folder on each device - it doesn't have a higher level abstraction like "no large zip archives" - but the functionality is there.

The trick here is that Dropbox has introduced this feature pretty late and only if you run the installer now (on a new machine perhaps) you'll notice the feature is there because the installer will ask you if you want to sync everything or selectively.

If I remember correctly, the older clients don't update to new versions automatically (or at least this was the case a year ago) and you will need to download a new client to make this feature available.

Your second paragraph is a really good point - if dropping a file into my GDrive-watched-folder makes it instantly accessible in Google Docs, and saving a file in Google Docs makes it appear in my local folder, then that sounds like a compelling piece of UX.

  Google X: Is the Y party Over?

I think I seen this on HN about 4 times in the last year.

Is there any front where google managed to beat a good established product (except Android) ?

Only good thing to come out of this, is a hopeful price reduction on Dropbox..

Is there any front where google managed to beat a good established product

Are we already forgetting about the former Web-based email products? Before Gmail came along, some of those looked like "good established products," but now I think they are all in decline, based on what I read in the industry press and observe of the behavior of my friends and professional colleagues.

Only 4? I don't think you've been watching very closely. Though maybe after deduplication...

And yes: Chrome (massive bite out of both IE and Firefox's share), email (Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, etc, take your pick), and mapping being the big ones. You could probably toss in online document editing and machine-translation too.

Google seems to do reasonably well with taking over tools, and less-so for taking over primarily-user-friendly applications or features. I'm not sure Dropbox has much to worry about.

You could probably add Picasa, Reader, Virtual Voicemail / Google Voice, Calendar, Video Chat, Instant Messaging as well.

Yeah, though they haven't really dominated any of those sections - I considered a few, actually. Picasa for instance is decent and moderately used, but Flickr and especially Facebook are way way larger in almost every respect.

Their calendar is the best online calendar I've found, but nobody I know uses it except Google-aware geeks and the ones I've taught (they love it now, didn't know it existed before). And online calendars haven't really reached public-awareness or usefulness yet, it seems - the closest most people come to computer calendars is their work's shared calendar that runs through Outlook.

Instant messaging they've certainly impacted, but I think AIM and MSN and Yahoo individually still out-number Google, though that may change with Plus. And Skype dominates video and voice chats, though Google is a threat (again, depends on how Plus pans out).

edit: Though Voice is incredibly awesome and absolutely dominates in its niche - of course, it's the only contender. But nobody knows how to use it, and its user-base consists of a laughable amount compared to <random national telecom>, AFAIK.

Agreed that the market penetration is still limited for many or most of those things, but I imagine Google's offering has made a disruptive splash to more than a few companies.

Yeah, we agree there :) I, for one, like the disruption - even if Google doesn't do it better, it spurs changes.

"Is there any front where google managed to beat a good established product (except Android) ?"

Are you serious? Try WEB SEARCH.

Actually; Web Search Web Advertising Web Based Email Online Mapping

They're not exactly failing in the Browser market either.

If you stop thinking in terms of Buzz and Wave etc, Google, when entering an arena with an existing proven market to attack, have a record of becoming the big dog in the yard quite handily.

It's sad, because I remember when the name meant something else, but... I just wouldn't trust Google with my files. By which I mean, I wouldn't trust that I wouldn't wake up one day and find myself locked out of Google Drive with no way back. I don't trust their user interface not to accidentally delete things, either. Google manages to give the appearance of this mysterious Tronlike glowing entity that occasionally spins off new automatic services, but not in a way that gives you the impression that this glowing manifestation of Google has ever talked with a user.

On the plus side: what are the odds that you both get locked out AND you desperately need your backups on the same day? They're both unlikely events. (You might want sync, but hopefully you won't need the backup due to a hard drive crash or some such.)

Of course, if enough people use the service, then statistically, it will happen several times.

I think services/sites can be divided into two when considering how/if people switch between them: (i) aggregate sites whose value is a (generally nonlinear) function of all users who use the site and (ii) personal sites whose impact is just for the person who uses it. The fact that I'm using Dropbox, too, doesn't provide any value to you (except of course economies of scale)

YouTube, Flickr, YouTube, etc. are Type I sites, it's hard to switch from them to competitors because it's hard to do it individually, a large majority of the users must switch, too, creating a chicken and egg problem.

Google Search, Dropbox, etc. are of Type II. You use these sites just because they are better than the competition. As soon as this is not the case, you, individually, can easily switch. You may call these commodity sites. That's why Bing is such a big threat to Google, and Dropbox is doomed if Google comes up with cheaper plans and sync clients as good as theirs.

That being said, one shouldn't assume that Google will dominate any market they enter, they have the capability of doing do, but in practice this may not happen: putting too few people on the project, wrong design decisions, crappy clients, etc.

You may be underestimating the prevalence of Dropbox shared folders, which make Dropbox into more type I.

Good point, I haven't thought about that. I wonder what percentage of content is shared, though. But this suggests one important strategy for Dropbox, they should immediately put more emphasis and develop better tools for content sharing to make their service more sticky fro people.

I don't have any numbers, but for a qualitative review see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3044351

Is Dropbox's business model not dependent on customer acquisition?

Every business model depends on customer acquisition. I don't understand where you're going with this question.

Great insight.

It's a natural thing for me to think about because a lot of OurDoings users use Dropbox as their photo uploader.

Great point. It's easy to forget this when you're doing a tech or internet company... But you still need a defensible strategy, and some competitive advantage if you want to successful in the long term. Yes, DropBox got it right compared to others so far, but that still doesn't mean the barriers to entry are high.. give people enough time, and you'll start losing market share to another saavy competitor

Here is the fundamental problem of competing against Google as a SW company. Google is an advertising company, as everyone now well knows. They have no problem selling SW cheap, or giving it away for free, if they can help their advertising business (either directly by hosting ads in the service, or mining data from the service for info to help target ads).

If you feel like your SW has actual value and charge for it, but Google has you in their cross hairs, you either really need a great product (that can't easily be cloned) or very strong network effects.

While I think DropBox is a great product, and harder to clone that most people give it credit for, Google I think is the type of company that could actually nail a DropBox clone. And with GMail, Docs, and Android integration -- could be a serious force.

I must admit I'm a bit saddened that the actual value of so much good SW is ~$0.

"you either really need a great product (that can't easily be cloned) or very strong network effects."

Or a business model where advertising won't easily support the resources needed to provide the service. Theoretically storage is one such service, but I guess with dipping storage costs, the tipping point where its cost effective with advertising alone might have reached now.

Storage costs have been insanely cheap for a long time, the real dropping cost that is enabling this is bandwidth costs (commercial bandwidth costs, not last mile consumer ISP costs).

"If you feel like your SW has actual value and charge for it, but Google has you in their cross hairs, you either really need a great product (that can't easily be cloned) or very strong network effects."

Let's substitute the names of Netscape and Microsoft circa 1997 and see how this plays out.

I can't wait to hear all the reasons why the Google/Dropbox comparative scenario is so much different.

Is your argument that Google should also be taken to court by the Department of Justice and submit to one of the largest antitrust settlements in American history?

Just an "observation".

You would have to ask the DOJ about anything else.

As a subscriber to additional storage with Google (20 GB, $5/year) I'm really happy to be reading this because it will allow me to fully use the space I've paid for. I believe it was the cheapest option when I subscribed and while I have crossed the free storage limit I have yet to fully use 20 GB.

I originally signed up for it because I was sporadically transferring a lot of high-res scans between a computer which my school owns and my own laptop, so a permanent dropbox-like folder would not have worked. Now I'll also be able to back up my music/photos dropbox-style with the same service. Smart move by Google for hitting both services, although it's kind of sad to see such a great startup being approached by the web's behemoth.

Your assumption (also the assumption in the article) is that the pricing won't change after it gets easier to fully use the space.

I would be really shocked if Google charged for a service like this, it fits in with Docs and Gmail which have both always been free and have made storage space easier to fully use. If anything, they will profit off of it by people investing in even more storage with them.

in addition as time progresses the cost of storage has gone down and can be expected to continue to do so.

Docs and gmail let you slowly fill available space while being exposed to Google Ads. A Dropbox clone would let you fill available space quickly without ads.

That's a fair point. It does look like they have an in-browser UI though, and it will drive more traffic to Google in general. The Chrome browser is another desktop app that doesn't directly benefit their ad campaign, but they have put a lot of time into.

Gmail has POP3, IMAP and SMTP for free without ads.

Yes, and GMail for mobile is ad-free. On average, though, I would expect more storage+bandwidth costs per ad impression from a GDrive user than from a GMail user, if GDrive turns out to be similar to Dropbox.

I keep having problems with Dropbox lately, with files that aren't synced and lots of conflicted copies. Not sure why but made me realize that Dropbox has been offering pretty much the same service for years now. Granted, the service was great from the beginning but: are they improving enough to remain competitive?

Completely agreed. Right now the most requested feature is "watch any folder". It received the most upvotes by a great margin (30%). And it was suggested 2 years ago.

Yet there is no indication of development at all on that front (or any other for that matter.)

I really like Dropbox, but seriously will look into GDrive too.

I also agree. Last i checked, their headless option was still an unofficial link in their forum, their prices have not come down, and there seem to have been several security problems. I've been a customer for over three years at this point, and while i'm not unhappy, i am open to competing value propositions.

"Watch any folder" would greatly clutter the beautiful ui and conceptual model.

It's a small price to pay when making all the users happy.

Dropbox is a dominant product because they understand user experience. Google's in-house products are, increasingly, failures because they don't.

* Of course, there are a lot of smart people at Google. It's not that there aren't Googlers who understand user experience, it's that the Google organism rejects their intuition and refuses to understand it. They methodically optimize UX to a local maximum, and throw up their hands when nobody is impressed, like a Vulcan trying to compose music.

Alright, now. Pay attention to the existence of paid option.

The fact that GDrive has a paid option indicates that they are aiming directly at Dropbox. If they were offering a completely free option, it would implicitly make GDrive fall into another category thus increasing its distance from Dropbox. I would also guess that Google can easily make GDrive completely free, these $5 / 20Gb is not likely to be breaking or making it for them. It is a just conversion facilitator. Furthermore consider their selected price point - it means that they want to remove all doubts when one compares two paid services and to strongly entice Dropbox users to switch.

<tinhat>Google Docs must be not working as great as they would like it to. People are still not using it for interesting documents of some value, and that's a bummer. Let's try and get to these documents another way...</tinhat>

Google Storage for Mail/Photos/Docs/etc has been charging $5/20Gb for months already. This isn't a special GDrive thing. At this point, GDrive would be a UI cleanup for the existing content sync services they already have, not a new service.

If this means I can combine the seamless syncing and "available anywhere with an internet connection" of Dropbox, with the convenience of being able to make easy edits in Google Docs if I don't have access to MS Word, I'm all for it.

google docs already does this with cloud connect

Unfortunately not when using my MacBook Pro unless I've got Win7 up in a VM.

Google doesn't necessarily squeeze out all competitors in any industry they enter, but they do raise awareness. In some sense this is great for Dropbox because I would guess well under 50% of computer users even know cloud storage services like this exist...but many more will if Google enters the market.

The problem, of course, is if they all learn about it through gmail and Google captures them all, but I think that underestimates Dropbox's ability to counter.

Lastly, don't discount human laziness aiding Dropbox customer retention - time is a switching cost here.

i remember hearing the same argument when google made google videos to compete with youtube, and we all know how that ended. That said, there were social and community aspects there that don't apply here, and google's cheaper storage prices and larger feature set may give it a leg up.

It's dangerous for Dropbox because GDrive will be automatically integrated into all Google services. I can access it anywhere from any Google service or device. No need to think about uploading, downloading, copying, pasting--it's just there. I don't use GDocs because it's the best.

I use it because all my friends use Gmail and sharing docs with them is super easy. I see GDrive having the same benefits. Sharing on Dropbox still isn't as easy as it should be. I've been trying to convince my girlfriend to sign up for a Dropbox accounts since we started dating, but no luck. With Gdrive, she will never need to.

That said, success is still not guaranteed. MS has had SkyDrive for years and I have no idea what the market penetration numbers are, but I'm sure they aren't good. Hotmail is no Gmail. I had no problems convincing a bunch of people to switch to Gmail, but only got one person to sign up for Dropbox.

Can it be scripted though? I want to set up a cron task to gzip a directory and send it to GDrive every night.

if its a desktop program like dropbox with a synced folder, you can write a script to place the gzip in the synced folder, and then it will sync automatically

That could work, hopefully it's a 1 way sync though. I don't want all of the contents of my cloud storage to be pulled down to my server.

you can use selective sync

It ended with Google buying YouTube.

Do you think they're going to buy DropBox too?

I highly doubt it. What i meant was that google videos failed. Google bought youtube for its community, not for its backend. This is not relevant with regard to dropbox, as file sync is a technical problem and google is fully capable of providing a technical solution.

Google Video launched a month before YouTube fyi.

you are right, my bad i missed that. Even so, my original comment is still relevant when you look at how google eventually realized their own product wouldn't catch up to a startup's, and bought them out.

I (we) use Google Apps. I'm assuming this would be another service. If we ever see it. Right now, it's vaporware.

It took me months to "train" everyone in the office on how to use Dropbox. -Ok stop laughing. I'm dealing with doctors here. :) I know doctors who can perform open heart surgery but can't use iTunes.

Anyway I'd rather not go through that training nightmare again. Google is gonna have to do something really impressive.

Erm, it's not vaporware. GApps has had this feature for years now, they're just rebranding it as google drive to compete with dropbox.

I dunno. I've been using Dropbox for years now, I've got it set up on all my computers, and as of right now I don't really have a pressing reason to switch. Gdrive would have to offer up something new and amazing before I'd want to change over. (And it would have to be something other than lower prices, because I don't back up enough stuff to have to pay for additional storage.)

Should dropbox worry? Sure, not worrying would simply be stupid.

Should they be mortally afraid? No, probably not. Dropbox has a lot going for them, and one of the biggest things they've got going for them is that they are not google.

They can specialize, they can do one thing and do it well and they just had a huge company validate their market for them.

Look at omniture vs analytics of how that can play out.

I'd love to see Dropbox open up their platform for developers to build applications on top of it. Seems like that could entail all sorts of things, such as solving the friction between using web apps with large files, or groups of files. Imagine dropping files in a folder and then being able to manipulate them on the web, and save them back to your folder seamlessly.

After the scare stories I've heard regarding gmail lockouts (and not just on news sites, yesterday someone I follow on twitter was temporarily locked out of their gmail for receiving a number of files quickly) I'm more inclined to continue using services that would not all get shut off with my gmail access being locked for a single ToS breach.

It's in areas like this that Google sometimes oversteps the mark and veers dangerously close to "being evil" territory... in MY opinion.

As I see it: Dropbox innovated, and they innovated well. It's inevitable that competition would arise, but competition on the scale Google can offer could well mean total annihilation for Dropbox, if annihilation is what Google pursues.

Google doesn't "need" to enter this market. And yes, I know that there's no rule that says you have to be nice... but it feels crappy to me. Dropbox has earnt it's success, and Google could easily let them grow and secure their future before releasing G-Drive. Google is in a position to be something of a patriarch in the tech world as opposed to eating it's young.

If I was working on a Dropbox competitor yesterday, today I'd be finding something else to do. That's bad for innovation.

if G-Drive actually exists that is.

I wonder if Google offered to buy Dropbox at any point. Regardless, it's still possible that they would purchase Dropbox for their existing user base, mindshare and tech, as they did with Youtube although they already had a competing Google Video service.

Nope. Bad logic.

I love Dropbox, but welcome to capitalism. Dropbox could exit to Google in an instant. They could have for years. The only reason they haven't is because they want to maximize the risk adjusted returns for their shareholders.

Since Google can't aquire Dropbox at a reasonable price, yet finds it necessary to have this type of service built into their offering, they are more than ok to compete.

oh yeah Dropbox innovated. Allowing anyone to login to any account without a password? Novel!

Any company - big or small - is going to enter markets where they think they can make an impact. I don't think it's about being nice to smaller companies (and BTW, Dropbox isn't that small any more). It's about what's the best fit for users, and having the market decide the winner. If Google make a product that can't compete with Dropbox's ease of use, they'll flounder, as have many Google products in the past (Buzz, Notebook, Dodgeball, Lively, Answers and so on). Sure - big companies have advantages of scale and cross-promotion, but small companies have advantages of speed and lack of bureaucracy.

Competition is good for users, and arguably good for companies too. Nice just doesn't come into it.

It wasn't good for users when Microsoft put Netscape out of business, and It wont be good for users if Google puts Dropbox out of business.

Google isn't entering this market though; they're already in it. This is merely rebranding a feature of Docs as its own product. Which makes sense, because files are not a subset of documents, documents are a subset of files. This probably has more to do with Larry Page's emphasis on product focus.

And I don't think this kills Dropbox at all. This is classic capitalism. Dropbox's competitive advantage is that they can completely focus on cloud storage, whereas the Google team is likely working on a half dozen or more other projects simultaneously. Dropbox is already tied into many apps, and has excellent features such as the ability to run your website from it. This does mean that Dropbox has to improve their efficiency to drop prices; they don't have to match GDrive but they have to come close.

This argument seems silly. Early innovation does not mean an end to competition, or an eternal lock on a product type.

Google's search engine would have never come into existence if their founders followed this line of thinking.

Read carefully. I'm not saying Dropbox should have a monopoly, but that the competition should be more evenly matched.

Unfortunately, when it comes to business, there is no feather-weight category. That said, Google it self overcame already entrenched competition in search through a better product and defended well against competitor with deep pockets (Microsoft).

That's "evil" only because they will compete with a smaller company that you personally happen to like.

yup, and I was very careful to point out that it was "my" view.

Is this credible news? Building GDrive seems completely incompatible with long term vision of Google (Chrome OS, Android, etc.) (at least vision implied by listening their earning calls).

Also sync'ing with local storage means allowing users to use non-Google Docs editors (MS Office) and all these cool collaboration things Google Apps are useless when you move in Gdrive mode.

Maybe building a good iphone/Android app to edit google docs online would be better investment of their talent?

And, on side note, as cloud storage becomes integral part of our lives, the companies which will win are not the cheapest one. But the ones with the best customer service and quality of product.

I agree, I was speculative when I read this. Google is making a push for a cloud based OS - so why would they roll out a product based on local file syncing?

Perhaps, this is a transitive product that will eventually be the foundation for Chrome OS file storage?

Two thoughts:

- I don't think the Dropbox party is over, and won't be for a while, because of non-techies. Dropbox is drop dead simple and non-technical people have gravitate to it and won't see much of a reason to switch. Also, Google has so many different products now, sometimes when you mention Google to non-technical people they get an overwhelming deer-in-the-headlights look.

- As a technical person, I am excited to hopefully have more online and offline document editing capability with Google Drive. Back when I had a Blackberry, Dropbox's app allowed me to edit files through the app, but with my iPhone app, I can't edit files on my Dropbox.

sometimes when you mention Google to non-technical people they get an overwhelming deer-in-the-headlights look.

That's interesting, I've never seen that. I always thought Google was the most beginner-friendly corner of the internet.

Bing tv adverts suggested that Google wasn't providing user friendly search results. So maybe there is some huddle of people who just can't cope with Google?

Yes, Bing is a direct competitor of Google.

I think it's more useful for your iPhone apps to edit documents on Dropbox, rather than for the Dropbox app itself to do it.

For most people I've seen using their computers, Google is the search bar and website launcher at the top of their browser window.

Well at least I hope they lower the super ridiculous high prices and make it more like $4 a year per 15 GB.

They seem greedy to me. They seem to want to be able to retire and not have to work anymore if they wanted after the dropbox startup.

> Google Drive: Is the Dropbox Party Over? Yeah, because Google will put a really nice effort making cross-platform client software like Dropbox does

Look how pathetic Google Talk desktop client is.

Is the Google Talk client really complex piece of VC++ shit that Google can't spare some decent develope from tens of throusands of genius employees?

Dropbox made it so I don't even think about it. My files are just where I need them. That is the amazing part: make it so that you don't see it, but it is always there.

I think they have a pretty broad-base and google entering the market validates the business model. Though, their prices might drop a bit.

By the way, to my knowledge dropbox doesn't provide drag-and-drop of files into and out of the browser window, which I see as kind of a key feature for this type of service. I know it's possible because gmail lets you drag-and-drop an attachment into a message in chrome...

Dropbox has a pretty large amount of users who are more than happy with the functionality of the application as it is. With more added features to come in later years, I think Google won't just steal the market with a Google labeled cloud drive.

I am excited about this. Competition in the market is good for innovation and the price.

Google needs to provide very simple native syncing apps that are equivalent to or better then Dropbox's and at the same time support several different platforms out of the gate to draw people away from Dropbox.

Yes, and that's an awful lot of work. More likely they'll launch something less functional than Dropbox, but good enough to slow Dropbox down a little while Google focuses on competing with Facebook.

From a user perspective, it'd be nice if it just came with Chrome.

I'm sure Dropbox would be horrified

Only by making Dropbox a lucrative acquisition target to someone else.

Don't think I'll be leaving DropBox, but redundancy is nice.

I expect GDrive to compete with Backblaze and Crashplan (cheap + inconvenient compared to Dropbox), but its effect on the Dropbox userbase to be minimal.

The reason I'll use dropbox over google drive? I'll store my files with a company that makes it's money from fees vs one that makes it's money from ads.

Huge benefits for G Drive! For example they will even scan the contents and let you know /IRS about any tax discrepancies for example.

my dropbox account was deleted without warning or notice, so i guess im ready for something new

repro steps: 1) have a dropbox account 2) join a company that uses dropbox teams 3) leave that company 4) poof, account disappears

That's one serious bug. Have you contacted Dropbox about it? What was their response?

What will kill Dropbox?:

Some similar product where we can install and manage our own servers.

That won't kill it for my mama.

I hope they'll give the option to do your own encryption, too.

Since one of the main features of GDrive will be to share files between Google Apps, I doubt that's plausible.

There's nothing stopping you from encrypting each file before upload, but then that file won't really be usable with Google's apps.

u can encrypt any file you upload to google docs or dropbox, though i know thats not what you mean :) that said, does any one know if google docs deduplicates?

If Apple or Microsoft introduce a competitor to your application, you are going to have a real difficult time staying in business. Are we to the same point with Google and cloud apps?

I thought Windows 8 was going to kill dropbox

I guess it won't take too much effort to get the Google username from that screenshot and just ask the guy ... any volunteers ?

personally I expect the GDrive to be a bit of a failure, and Google will do what it always does...use it's massive cash reserves to buy Dropbox.

    Google Drive: $5 per year per 20 GB.
    Dropbox Pro 50 plan, $10 per month for 50 GB

"the price of Google Drive looks dirt cheap." wait what?

At those rates, Google's service for 100GB for a year would be $25. Dropbox's would be $240. I think I'd call a little under 10.5% the cost "dirt cheap", but I guess that's subjective.

Google Drive is $5 per 20GB per year. I'd say that's a pretty significant difference.

haha, that's what I get for staying up late.

In fairness, when you compare 2 things, you should use the same units, and they didn't. They should have extended Dropbox's plan to the year to show the difference.

The price of Google App Engine looked dirt cheap too.

And then what happened?

They changed a significant charge from CPU time to wall time.

And they did this with an execution model of only giving a single request at a time to a process.

So a process taking half a second to make a query or poll a url is suddenly getting a massive price hike.

Edit: on the other hand a fresh search is suggesting that python 2.7 and with it concurrent requests are coming in a couple months

to be fair the original pricing for app engine was for a google product that was in early beta. Google Docs has been out of beta for a long time, and their storage prices have decreased since they were first released. In addition they have removed file type limitations, and increased max file size to 10gb. It is be beyond unlikely that they would regress and increase prices.

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