Hacker News Reader

Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

I know Dropbox will be Dropbox in 5 years.

As a counterpoint to that, Dropbox might not exist in 5 years. Google most likely will.

Basically, there is no answer here that guarantees the future of your cloud storage. It's useful to access your files from multiple locations, but using it for long term file archival seems like asking for disappointment (as well as being a neat way of throwing money into the sky).

View on HN

If there is a choice - it is better to place your bet with the company whose main business line depends on the service you are using. Google has a long history of dropping services, because it can. It does not matter to Google that 10k people or 100k people find that particular service useful. Google is not about to drop search and search related ads any time soon - storage services it could drop tomorrow and not care less.

I'm not a betting man but if I had to put $1 on which service (Dropbox or Google Drive) would disappear first I'd bet Dropbox.

I'd probably bet on Google putting Dropbox out of business with competition, then getting rid of Drive because it's no longer a growth area.

oof, worst of both worlds

How very Kafka.

If it was Kafka, at some point Google would transform into a giant locust, be accused of unknown crime, and sentenced to a prison colony in America.

This. The very obvious thing in the $10 terabyte offer is, Google wants Dropbox and all data hosters out of business.

So I trust that Dropbox _will_ be out of business very soon.

Why? Just because Google are going cheap? I'm personally not interested because it's Google. This may surprise many of you, but there are quite a lot of people who simply don trust Google.

I'm not convinced this is a war that will be won on price alone. Nor will it be won on commodity features (i.e. sync).

Google's advantage is that they can slowly eat away at Dropbox's market share by integrating Google Drive with and marketing it through their other products.

Dropbox's advantage is their existing customer base.

In time I think Google's got the upper hand on this one.

> there are quite a lot of people who simply don trust Google.

while I agree with you in principle, there's also quite a lot more people who simply are happy (relieved, even) that they can make the computer help them perform the task they want to accomplish. I'm not even saying that Dropbox or Google is better at this, just that I see people use every day just what's right in front of them and they know they can make work. and because of that they don't seem to have the luxury (even if they have the foresight) of considering what will stick around for longest (or perhaps what's idealistically "right" to choose).

again, I'm not defending this situation. but it does seem (to me) that the majority of people are motivated by this, and cannot afford or consider decisions like whether or not to "simply not trust Google".

> I'd probably bet on Google putting Dropbox out of business with competition, then getting rid of Drive because it's no longer a growth area.

That's not too unlikely, if by "Drive" you mean the desktop sync application, which pretty clearly has always been pretty tangential to the strategic purpose of Drive, which is first and foremost a cloud storage platform for web apps (Google first-party apps, institutional customer second-party apps, and ISV third-party apps).

That's exactly what I think - I even said so earlier - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7394140

Either way, it would be a shame if Google sank Dropbox and I would resent it. Dropbox is a GREAT service for free, then charges if you like more space. They offer the best use cases around for developers who do a lot of cross device work. You can keep all your information on all testing environments, and even share folders with others (or other accounts) and not really face limitations (i.e. no linux support). And with Google already getting strict about storage on Android, you can only suspect a Chess move to gain control with a dollar 99 on the hook.

If there is a choice - it is better to place your bet with the company whose main business line depends on the service you are using.

I don't see how that's a hard and fast rule. File storage is Dropbox's only business line - if it fails, they're gone. If it helps their other concerns (Gmail, Google Apps) Google can prop up Drive even if its unprofitable.

Gmail and Apps are at best minor contributors to Google's bottom line. If faith in Drive is based on its contribution to them, that Is little reason for that faith to be strong.

It's true that they're not major contributors to Google's bottom line. Do you think Gmail will be cut soon as well?

> If there is a choice - it is better to place your bet with the company whose main business line depends on the service you are using. Google has a long history of dropping services, because it can.

Depends.

Google might decide to stop supporting it because they want to focus on something else and DropBox might decide to pivot because they can no longer make enough money compared to the costs they incur (especially as Google is slowly squeezing them out of the market with the kind of price slashing we are currently discussing).

Nobody can claim with certainty which of Google or DropBox is more likely to support their product the longest.

It's not like Google is just going to cancel Drive and delete all of your files. If Drive goes away all you need to do is signup for Drop Box...

Actually the best choice is to store your data with both.

This announcement just made that significantly cheaper, and there's opportunity here for a "cloud RAID" offering to take the hassle out of mirroring one's data. Dropbox already has the API, so they could turn this to their advantage.

I say we support Dropbox for secure storage and dump our images and videos on Google Drive and see how long they store that cheap. Don't just buy a g and throw a few things in there, make them earn this low-balling war.

I would like to add, the service provider that has built software for MAC, IOS, Windows, Linux and Android might be a better choice as well. I do like both Google Drive and Dropbox, but Google can't even make the time to support Linux and obviously can, so would you trust them when they have motives other than a universal storage device. Heck, even Ubuntu One does this well.

Dropbox is profitable yeah? Why wouldn't they be around in 5 years? Google's prices are so much cheaper than Dropbox, but the ease of use with Dropbox, and the fact that I have my families devices and computers already set up probably means I wont ever switch.

I take a picture with my phone? It's on dropbox. My wife takes a picture? It's on dropbox. I take a screenshot on my PC? It's on dropbox.

I even wrote a little silly bookmark tool to use the dropbox API.

Dropbox is amazing. It's more than just about the price.

But we are a niche. Most people who have an Android phone will store pictures automatically in Google Drive/Plus (if anywhere).

"Dropbox is profitable yeah? Why wouldn't they be around in 5 years? Google's prices are so much cheaper than Dropbox,"

I'd just stop you there because you may have answered your own question.

I get the poart about already having it set up, but is Dropbox usability that different from Google Drive? My phone uploads photos automatically, and the rest seems equally easy to set up.

All these things are true of Drive, though. The only real reason I haven't switched over is, like you, all my stuff is already in Dropbox, and they're pretty much the same thing, so I wouldn't gain that much by switching (I actually use Drive too, but only for its original form, Docs). The new price is a big discount, but we'll have to see if Dropbox moves to match it in some way (they have less room to optimize there, but it's certainly feasible...amazon has been cutting their rates too).

If I was new to the market, though, none of that reasoning really applies.

Dropbox is profitable yeah? Why wouldn't they be around in 5 years? Google's prices are so much cheaper than Dropbox

You just answered your own question. Dropbox is convenient because you've already installed it everywhere. Google Drive is already on your Android phone and in your e-mail inbox.

I think that's actually part of the problem, I think of Google Drive as where I put attachments from email, not files and folder on my computer.

I can't put my finger on it but Drive just seems clunky, especially with the GMail / Docs integration.

I would argue drive is better. Not only does it have device syncing like dropbox but it seamlessly integrates with the google ecosystem. And now its much much cheaper.

Try it on Ubuntu or Mint then! Talk about clunky, you have no choice but to get the stuff from the web and download. That's why I stick with Dropbox.

off topic and a silly question: "bookmark tool that uses the dropbox API", what do you mean by that?

I made this thing:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dripmarks/oeibaijn...

Surely there have been companies that have shut down less than 5 years from the last time they were profitable.

Google has a history of shutting even profitable projects. Dropbox doesn't.

There is a legitimate reason to be wary of relying on anything Google.

What profitable projects have they dropped that would be along the same impact as Google Drive?

Are you saying they may significantly cut down the cloud capabilities?

Google Checkout.

Didn't it just get merged with Wallet?

https://developers.google.com/wallet/

Google Checkout had subscriptions.

Google Wallet does not have subscriptions.

Yes it does.

https://developers.google.com/wallet/digital/docs/subscripti...

Ok, it looks like subscriptions. Though it does not allow me to charge my customers who subscribed for Google Checkout. And it's definitely not the same API as Google Checkout.

None of my customers missed Google Checkout. I got burned by losing subscriptions due to Google Checkout retirement.

I'm not going to touch Google Wallet.

It's Google and it's just a place to put data. Google won't lose your data. If they shutter, you'll have 2 years to move that data to ACME Drive.

Just to be absolutely clear... you'll have 2 years to drag and drop a folder to another location.

I entirely agree with this. I am surprised that no one brought it up earlier.

On top of that, Google Drive makes sense to Google for their multi-devices/Google Access Everywhere kind of strategy. When you have tablets or phones with limited memory but network access, Google Drive plays well in that space to extend the capabilities of the said devices.

Dropbox, on the contrary, only has a SINGLE service to rely on, and they could be made obsolete by pricing, features, integration or other stuff like that. It's not good to rely on a single service for your bottom line, and Dropbox is no longer a small startup just beginning on the market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com