
Dropbox – A nebulous future - CaptainZapp
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/12/dropbox
======
gregpilling
I am no expert in online synchronized storage. I am merely a consumer who has
used ICloud, Dropbox and Google Drive. From my perspective iCloud has been a
disappointment, Google Drive has been ok (we also use Google Apps in my
company) and Dropbox seems to be the easier and more popular setup with my
staff. The only issue I have is with their pricing (I find their company plans
confusing), but we all know that is a new landing page away if they decide to
change it.

The equation is not about $dollars per Gb storage per year, it is more about
$/Gb/MyPain which is a more subtle equation. If my employees like Dropbox
better than Drive, the few dollars in cost difference is inconsequential. The
employees time costs many multiples more than the storage.

I think the article fails to acknowledge this.

~~~
FigBug
I really like iCloud, but it's not a competitor to Dropbox/Google Drive or
even a feature itself. I have and iPohone, 2 iPads, and 2 Macs. (Home/Work) I
really like how everything is just synced without thinking about it.

We use Dropbox at work a company of about 10. We don't have any servers or IT.
Everything just goes it Dropbox shared folders. Works very well and never have
to think about it.

Since Dropbox is for work, I moved all my personal files to Google Drive. On
feature lists it should be the same or better, but I find it just never works
reliably. A lot of times I find it just sitting there unable to connect and
there seems to be no option to reconnect other than exit and restart. The UI
on Dropbox seems a lot more polished.

~~~
pqs
> Since Dropbox is for work, I moved all my personal files to Google Drive. On
> feature lists it should be the same or better, but I find it just never
> works reliably

Three months ago I decided to put all my pictures on a cloud provider. I
really liked Dropbox but I chose G. Drive, because of the price. I put my 15k
photos on my G. Drive and then the client went crazy. My old (2007) MacBook
couldn't cope with it, it rapidly used 100% of my computer's 2GB of RAM and my
CPU was also at full capacity. Thus, I decided to try the same exercice on
Dropbox. I moved the whole pictures folder and Dropbox handled it perfectly
using a few MB of RAM.

Since then, I'm a happy paying Dropbox user.

------
EdiX
Dropbox's price problem has nothing to do with the price per GB. The problem
is that the lowest non-free tier is a whopping 100GB.

There is just no way I'm going to use anywhere close to 100GB. There is no way
I'm going to use even a quarter of that space. With the bandwidth I have
access to is just to inconvenient.

I'm probably going to switch to an alternative next may when my subscription
runs out, it's annoying because I like dropbox but their prices are getting
too inconvenient.

~~~
sp332
Are you saying $10/mo is too much for how much you use Dropbox? Or that you
would feel better if they gave you less space...

~~~
mun2mun
Well for Google Drive you pay almost $30 annually for extra 25GB space. $10
per year for 20GB if you use SkyDrive. Plus both Google Drive and SkyDrive
support online doc editing. So yes it is really too much for paying $10/month
for 100GB space which I may not use fully for foreseeable future.

------
vanni
It's "nebulous", not "nebolous", dear submitter :) BTW "nebulous" comes from
Latin "nebula", i.e. "cloud". No pun intended, The Economist!

~~~
mseebach
In the case of the Economist, you can absolutely assume that the pun was
intended.

------
aes256
Jobs had it right.

Dropbox is obscenely overvalued, and has no place in the future.

~~~
keithpeter
I take your point, but while it is here, it is _very_ useful!

The phasing out of direct links to the 'public' folder for new users recently
suggests a need to find revenue streams.

A possible alternative...

" _I'm funded by a Kickstarter project in 2012-2013 to build something not
unlike DropBox, based on git-annex, that automatically version controls and
syncs files between computers._ "

<http://joey.hess.usesthis.com/>

~~~
aes256
Sure, but a $5-10bn valuation for a freemium file hosting service with ~100m
users, 96% of which pay nothing?

Someone let me out of this bubble.

~~~
tln
4m * $10/mo is about $500MM/year or 10x-20x valuation, or 8x the valuation in
the article $4bn. Is that so out of whack?

------
jpdoctor
Remember when you needed to pay for email storage? Competition drove that
price to zero as companies used it as a loss leader for other revenue streams
(eg, advertising).

I suspect a similar outcome. The question is when, of course.

~~~
Derbasti
Email is free if you like to be targeted by ads and want to contribute to
advertisement research. Also, next to no customer service and no choice
regarding you contract.

Which is still a great bargain. But not one I choose.

------
mtgx
"If you are sharing files with a dozen other people on Dropbox, a move to
Google or Microsoft would require all 12 to move with you."

I don't get what. I'm just sharing a link anyone can access from Google Drive.
Why would they need to "move" to Google Drive? I don't see this as a problem.
If anything it's just the mind share momentum that Dropbox has. Everyone keeps
recommending Dropbox because they know it's the most popular. But I don't see
any technical lock-in. The others can beat it through higher integration with
their own operating systems and others as well, therefore higher convenience,
through better functionality, and through better/more marketing.

I'm not saying it's going to be easy, as it's usually very hard to beat an
established market leader, but it should be possible. I'm not sure why Google
hasn't integrated Google Drive as a core app of Android. It seems like the
logical move to do, especially with Apple already doing it. Same goes for
Google Wallet.

~~~
FigBug
I assume they are referring to sharing a folder with read / write access,
which requires everybody to use Dropbox.

------
gibsonf1
I think their future might be brighter than painted. I work at large
corporation (50,000+ employees) and they _love_ box. The reason: the company
has very stringent security requirements, and box lets them store files on
their own servers but using the box UI - it is a very big deal for the
enterprise market.

~~~
FigBug
How do you get this feature? I don't see it advertised anywhere.

~~~
gibsonf1
That's a good question - I wonder if they have enterprise sales people that
handle that?

------
drcube
>A bigger long-term worry is the plummeting price of digital storage.

They mention that Google offers their service cheaper. But not the fact that
you can have your own personal terabyte cloud for a couple hundred bucks, one
you personally own and control, and never have to pay a subscription for.
_That_ is what threatens Dropbox and friends the most. Once storage becomes
cheap enough to price personal NAS clouds below $100 (and upstream bandwidth
gets faster than molasses), why would anybody trust a DMCA/FISA-encumbered,
subscription-based business with their data?

~~~
FigBug
I've wondered why nobody has done a good Dropbox clone where you run the
server yourself. I'm guessing there is no business model.

~~~
henrikgs
Aerofs is something like that <https://www.aerofs.com/>

It is a really nice product, somehow I keep falling back on Dropbox in actual
use though.

~~~
nanook
I wonder when they're launching. They've been invite only for a really long
time now.

~~~
rdl
I've been using it for a year (I know some people there); it is by far my
favorite of the cloud storage products.

Pretty much my needs are something like AeroFS, PLUS some kind of local
SAN/NAS (big, fast), PLUS something like Sharepoint, Kerio Workspace, or
Atlassian Confluence. None of them really cover all my needs alone.

------
plg
What still amazes me is that people (around the world) are willing to let
these US companies store their personal data, email, etc. I'm not trying to be
a troll but I think it's worth pointing out that many non-US citizens would
have a BIG problem with this. Or so I thought. The other thing that surprises
me is that so many techies use these services, where most of the functionality
can be easily achieved using existing tools, which would be under your
personal control. If its a choice between giving up freedom and having the
responsibility to backup my own data, I choose the latter. Sure my grandma may
choose the former but I would try to convince her otherwise.

~~~
agreemensch
It amazes me too. I hardly view Dropbox as a stalwart company. But good on
them for hitting the jackpot in the short term.

Amazon AWS, upon which Dropbox relies, is open to all, not just Dropbox. Even
Xen, upon which Amazon relies, is open to all, not just Amazon. Things are
still very primitive and there's ample room, and plenty of motivation (e.g.
data privacy), for experimentation.

Besides prgmr, who else is offering Xen-based "cloud" (=hosting)? Are there a
wealth of Xen-based alternatives (that could support "Dropbox" like
functionality)?

------
lutusp
The original title: "Dropbox - A nebulous future"

The title of this thread: "Dropbox - A nebolous future"

Moral: For God's sake, either learn how to spell or COPY your titles, don't
presume to type them in.

Since spelling is beyond you, here's a copying primer:

1\. Use your mouse to select the title from the original page.

2\. Press Ctrl+C (Copy).

3\. Open a new HN submission form.

4\. Press Ctrl+V (Paste).

Very simple. Apparently simpler than learning to spell.

A quibble? Not at all. A misspelled word in the title of an HN submission
prevents searching by keyword and therefore consigns the entire submission to
the great bit-bucket in the sky.

------
ErikAugust
I've said it before - Dropbox to Apple would have been an amazing fit since
iCloud is meh. Damn you Internet over-valuations.

~~~
nanook
Had Apple bought dropbox, they would've made support for other platforms
secondary. Dropbox is still the only cloud storage service that works
beautifully on both linux and mac (and windows).

~~~
ErikAugust
This is true. It's actually in my interest they didn't in a way as I'm on a
bunch of platforms - iOS, Windows, Linux and Mac.

------
jimfl
"...a feature, not a company," is high praise. That's how it should be, as
long as that feature can be combined with other such features to create new
things.

Very few users are well served by being locked into a single vendor's
constellation of hastily slapped together aquihires.

------
mbubb
I thought you were coining a neologism in the title.

"cloudy + flesheating?!?!?"

Clicked just for that and was disappointed.

------
niggler
Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft swept in and replaced their SkyDrive with
Dropbox?

