

What's Dropbox going to do now?  - sudhirj

Now that Google Drive is out, what's Dropbox's differentiator? Google seems to be offering more space, possible better integration, tie ups with Google Docs (both online and offline) and possibly more speed.<p>It is possible Dropbox is prepared for this? What kind of plan could they carry out to stay in the race?
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israelyc
This is great - Dropbox are doing only one thing and they're great at it. The
way I see it it's like Google is a restaurant that sells Italian and Mexican,
and Dropbox is just Italian - where would you go to eat?

And with the competition, Dropbox will focus more on monetizing enterprise
users and in order to keep the individual users it will at least match the
space that Google is offering.. So as far as I am concerned I am getting an
Italian chef to cook my meal for the price of McDonald's..

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sudhirj
That's what I would have thought at first, but the problem (for Dropbox) I'm
seeing there is that there isn't really that kind of differentiator.

You have a folder that exists on your devices, and the contents of the folder
are automatically synced across all your devices. You also have a web
interface that you can use to upload and download files. You have a certain
amount of space and can buy more. You can share that folder or parts of it
with others or teams.

Am I talking about Dropbox or Drive?

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ig1
It also describes rsync

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sudhirj
Touché.

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tsurantino
As some one else had already said, Dropbox is non-intrusive. It's a stand-
alone product that, by doing so, offers incredible flexibility. The
differentiating factor is that, unlike other Cloud Services, it doesn't want
to get in your way. It doesn't want to force anything on you. It just wants to
make you do what you already want to do, better (sharing files).

Google Drive and other cloud solutions have big, overarching ideas. That's one
of the reasons why it took Google Drive so long to get out to the public. From
what I've read, there was a whole internal political controversy about how it
should be implemented with respect to the entire Google bouquet (or current
lack thereof).

That being said, Dropbox will need to work hard to push the industry of cloud
servicing into a new direction to compete with Google, which will be quickly
adapting to eventually outpace the startup.

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sairam_
I think dropbox is great and non intrusive but this presents 2 challenges 1\.
Since dropbox is almost in the background, it's much easier to forget about
it, than my gmail and google docs (google drive's integration with it). I
think this means that I will adopt google drive sooner than i would like to
admint and slowly start forgetting dropbox because it's too non-intrusive 2\.
What will this do to new user adoption for dropbox? google drive is clearly
visible ...

i think dropbox should quickly scale up enterprise level activations and the
non google dependent users ... also might help them to develop new strategies
to start holding on to people, becoming a bit more visible ...

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tzaman
I'm not sure I understand why people are so intimidated by Google. So what if
they enter the same niche someone else is in. The way I see it, Dropbox has
been around for years and thus having a lof of experience when it comes to
usability and users' needs. Google needs to catch up - though I doubt they'll
ever really be on par with Dropbox (apart from disk space) - Google has never
been known for good user experience (minus the search functionality, which is
good)

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salvadornav
I totally disagree with your last statement. Google Search, GMail, Google
Analytics are all examples of great user experience (although I don't like
GMail's redesign). To most people Dropbox is just a folder where they can put
files that need to access from different places/devices, so I am a bit skeptic
regarding the value of Dropbox "experience know-how". With more space, Google
Docs integration and probably GMail and G+ integration as well, DB should at
least be worried.

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tzaman
I have many clients whom I set up Google Analytics for. The don't have a clue
how to use it. Even after several courses.

Go ahead and do some (non web-savvy) user testing on that and prove me wrong.

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bbatchelder
I won't be switching any time soon. The way Google manages its products, I
want to wait a bit and make sure they won't give it the axe like Wave.

Ideally, this will just force Dropbox to up their game and/or drop their
prices, which I will reap the benefit of without having to migrate my data.

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aorshan
I think a different way to think about it should be, since Google Drive and
Dropbox are pretty much the same, why should I switch from Dropbox to Google
Drive?

I certainly can't think of a reason and thus will happily remain a Dropbox
user.

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twog
I would imagine pricing would be the biggest motivation to change. Dropbox is
8x more expensive per GB.

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MattBearman
I'll be sticking with dropbox simply for data diversification. I already run
all my email through Google, call me paranoid, but I don't like the idea of
them having access to all my 'cloud-y' data.

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matthewsinclair
It would seem that as things stand, DropBox has a big lead in the race to
offer sensible terms and conditions.

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sudhirj
If by sensible terms and conditions, you mean zero access and indexing of
documents, then I think Google might offer that on business accounts.

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macca321
Webhooks, webhooks, webhooks. They will drive innovation and thus adoption.

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sirwanqutbi
google will eventually suck everyone in through uniting all the services...
thats where anti-competition laws should take action.

