
Why Dropbox is Failing - zackify
http://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-be-a-Product-Manager-at-Dropbox/answers/14460156?srid=TBE&share=1
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amalag
One thing Dropbox does which I think is pretty easy and yet noone has done is
their Apps.

As a developer you can create a dropbox App which means there is a specific
subdirectory in the users dropbox folder which you have access to. That's it,
really simple. This lets me create for instance a purchase order distribution
system in which the company drops their purchase orders in a folder and they
will be distributed to their vendors with email notifications. What other
system facilitates this?

In contrast Google Drive apps are all or nothing. You cannot ask for
permission on a single folder!

Are there any other services that can do this like Box.net?

~~~
proexploit
Google Drive has an application data folder that is a separate permission from
reading and writing all your files:
[https://developers.google.com/drive/web/appdata](https://developers.google.com/drive/web/appdata)

~~~
amalag
> The Google Drive API includes a special hidden folder that your app can use
> to store application data.

Again, that means a user cannot drop their files into a special app folder for
processing. It does not facilitate the simple use case of creating an App to
distribute purchase orders to vendors.

~~~
proexploit
But your application could store them there... I don't think the use case most
users are looking for is to have a magic Drive folder that automatically
processes purchase orders when they're added.

That's also not what the parent comment I commented on was referring to.

~~~
amalag
I think it is a very common use case to have a folder for an app that will do
something and not have an app need permission to your entire folder. But
google doesn't think so. You had responded to my comment which talked about
such a use case.

I think it is obvious that purchase orders are an example. Have temporary
hidden storage via an application data folder may be useful, but I am talking
about folder level permissions for an app.

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benbristow
I used to love Dropbox because of how simple it was. You could even host
static HTML websites through it. All links were direct links, it was
beautiful. Now you have to go through splash pages that try and make you login
to the service, it's a pain.

I see no reason to use it anymore though. It's expensive, there's little free
space and it lacks in features compared to Google/One Drive.

~~~
bengali3
yup, I love DB, but I cant even edit text files on dropbox.com. I'd have stuck
around longer to at least have this but they haven't innovated around my needs
in a while - so it rarely comes up as a solution to others issues.

During school dropbox was great for groups as well as my multiple devices, but
anecdotally over the last few years i've changed my behavior:

Photos & Videos - now on amazon CloudDrive since i'm already a prime member -
now I finally don't have space issues on my phone anymore, Amazons iOS app
convinced me that they're serious (for now..)

Documents on Google drive - mainly due to simple online editors for XLS and
DOC - resume and daily logs

Static websites now on S3 (anyone recommend an S3 sync tool?)

Grocery lists shared with the wife - now using SimpleNote since we can edit on
devices and cloud

I haven't gone to my free Dropbox account in a while, so its becoming an
archive with less traffic for my account. I'm sure they track dormancy rates
as well, i'd wager i'm not alone. I did get dad to put his photos & docs up on
dropbox and he loves it. Meanwhile I just upgraded to start paying for amazon
cloud drive so my wife has a one click solution to backing up her photos and
videos from her phone.

Edit: Drew took the first bite out of the multiple device problem and rocked
it better than anyone else because he put the users experience first, above
all. Today plenty of big players host consumer data, but i feel none are truly
focused on the everyday problems of the average joe, Drew could do it again.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> Static websites now on S3 (anyone recommend an S3 sync tool?)

s3cmd [http://s3tools.org/s3cmd](http://s3tools.org/s3cmd)

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boomzilla
Are things that bad at Dropbox? I know its user growth has been slowing down,
but I thought it's more because they've been focusing on monetization. It does
seem to me that Dropbox is a feature, not a complete product. If it goes away
tomorrow, all I need to do is to move all my files from Dropbox folder to
either OneDrive/GoogleDrive/AmazonDrive, and all is good.

I've seen some data sharing problem that's critical for business and I don't
think Dropbox can help there. For example, we need to share (and work on) some
very confidential and sizable datasets (think hundreds of GBs). After looking
around a bit, we decided to go with an AWS VPC (two factor login required),
and set up big Windows machine in the VPC, and everyone who need to work on
the datasets have to remote desktop in. It's not ideal, but at least we can be
reasonably sure that no one needs to make a copy of the data (one can not
accidentally do that, and it's not trivial to do deliberately).

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kienankb
I've used Dropbox for a long time, and it's been really useful in school (as
others have noted) and for sharing files, but recently I've actually moved to
ownCloud ([https://owncloud.org/](https://owncloud.org/)). I hooked a 500GB
HDD into my RasPi at home, spent some time on configuration and setup, and now
I've got functionally the same product, but limited in space only by how much
storage I want to buy (one-time cost, obviously) and plug in instead of the
13.25GB I have on DB that I had to scrounge around for offers and promotions
to get.

It's nice because I have a backup of whatever files I'd like at home instead
of somewhere else, and if I were super paranoid I could make that into
redundant storage, back that up daily, etc. It's a little more work but a lot
more control.

If the linked post is accurate, it sounds like an absolutely horrible work
environment.

~~~
throw7
My limiting factor is internet up speed of a piddly 120KB/s max. It's not
useful or what I would consider broadband... at all. oh well.

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onedurr
I have 23gb of free storage with DB (took advantage of early referral deals),
and of the many sync storage services I've tried (many of which no longer
exist), DB is the only one that's consistently worked near-perfectly for me.
Aside from wondering at the products seemingly coming out of left field, had
no idea of any internal company issues...

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EC1
The only thing I use dropbox for is to publically store screenshots for easy
sharing, and dropbox fails more than 50% of the time at that. (the "click to
share public link" feature, sometimes takes upwards of 2 minutes, sometimes
it's instant)

~~~
seesharp
I can recommend using Imgur for storing screenshots. For Windows you can use
Greenshot
([http://sourceforge.net/projects/greenshot/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/greenshot/))
and for OS X you can use Mac2Imgur
([https://github.com/mileswd/mac2imgur](https://github.com/mileswd/mac2imgur)).

Uploading images is instant, the image quality is higher, embedding is
actually possible, you don't need to have an account and thumbnails are
automatically generated.

~~~
cheald
This has been my solution, too. It's much faster than Dropbox.

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JoeAltmaier
I'd pay except its impractical. My club uses Dropbox to hold our artwork (game
design club). Its several GB of art.

But the pricing plan goes from free (and we've hit our limit on that) to over
a thousand dollars annual. Yes, that's right. We are 10 people, times the
monthly fee each, times 12 months per year. For a hobby club.

The worst part of that is, we'd be paying for what? To hold our own data on
our own machines, sharing it with our own bandwidth. Dropbox adds a sync
feature to that. Which seems like it would cost a fixed fee to access, now and
forever. Not scaling with the size of our data ( _our_ data, on our machines).

Anyway, we don't pay.

~~~
Epskampie
Try bittorrent sync: [https://www.getsync.com/](https://www.getsync.com/)

Direct syncing from computer to computer (peer 2 peer), no storage limits.

~~~
benbristow
Or the open-source alternative, Syncthing.
[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

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bitzerlander
This reminds me of working at Lycos as a PM a long time back, soon after they
collapsed. I distinctly remember it taking 3 weeks to approve a community
update email, and a 50k budget to outsource for a simple nav bar with
categories...

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Adut
It's been my experience that anytime you work for a company larger than about
50 people, it starts devolving into the sort of situation the OP describes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle).
The best you can hope to do in this situation is to put on the big boy/girl
pants and be a champion for change.

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ommunist
Problem of Dropbox as a product I will possibly use, that functions I need
from it, can be relatively easy achieved with git on your home server or NAS,
and Working Copy.app on your tablet or phone. At a fraction of cost.

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sjg007
I have a 8GB iPhone 5c but I take a lot of pictures/videos. I'd like to have
them stored in the cloud and maybe only have thumbnails on the device. Has
anyone solved this? Music can now be cloud streamed.

~~~
boduh
Yes, you can install Carousel from Dropbox. It will store your photos in
Dropbox and free up the space on your phone but you will still be able to see
the photos in the Carousel app. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/carousel-by-
dropbox/id825931...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/carousel-by-
dropbox/id825931374?mt=8)

Look for "Free Up iPhone Space" in "Settings"

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philippnagel
Is Dropbox profitable?

~~~
smpetrey
Apparently not, which is a shame.

