
Dropbox closing Carousel and Mailbox - cedricr
https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2015/12/saying-goodbye-to-carousel-and-mailbox/
======
schneidmaster
Ugh. Yet another intriguing email startup being acquihired and killed off by a
more-established tech company (see also: Sparrow). It's 2015 and I still
bounce around email clients every couple months because all of the major
options have substantial flaws.

~~~
untog
Probably because there simply isn't money to be made in being an e-mail
startup.

Or, more correctly, there isn't _enough_ money to be made to satisfy VC
investors. Mailbox and the like could have lived quite comfortably as paid-for
apps with comfortable but small levels of profit, but that isn't what Silicon
Valley rewards.

EDIT: also, IIRC Apple's restrictions on background processing meant that they
needed to have every user's account set up on their servers to process push
notifications. Did that ever change? If not that's a non trivial
expense/complication to scaling, especially when you're up against an OS-
integrated app that doesn't have those restrictions.

~~~
bdotdub
> there isn't enough money to be made to satisfy VC investors. Mailbox and the
> like could have lived quite comfortably as paid-for apps with comfortable

I'm not sure that's true (see: Sparrow). I just don't think there is enough
demand for people to want to pay for an email client. I imagine for a huge
majority of people, default mail client's work fine enough for personal use.

~~~
x0x0
Not to mention, if you're old like me, you remember paying (I think?) $100 and
then eventually $49 for eudora / upgrades for eudora. In approx 1990 dollars.
We now live in a world where people pitch tantrums about paying $10 for an
app, and expect perpetual upgrades for that price! So simultaneously
expectations have skyrocketed and prices have plummeted.

Part of the problem is, unlike say Pinboard, an email client doesn't feel like
1-3 devs worth of work. The protocols are horrendous, you have to understand
the quirks of lots of servers, etc. Plus all the UI and backend and search
work. I'm not sure it's approachable as a small indie company.

There's also, of course, bad behavior by large companies such as mozilla:
Thunderbird made it very difficult to build an indie email client because you
have to compete on merits and against free, but they eventually got bored and
just quit making it. Not to mention competing with free/ad-supported. And the
semi-annual YC/vc supported email client company.

Not to mention what is coming close to active sabotage of productivity apps by
the ios and mac app stores (lack of trials, lack of upgrades, etc).

~~~
hussong
I remember paying for The Bat! and loving it.

~~~
viraptor
Pegasus mail was pretty good, even if a bit enterprisy. I just searched and
wow... it's still being developed! The website even still lists the msdos
version. [http://www.pmail.com/](http://www.pmail.com/)

------
tvararu
I felt this coming given my experience using the Mailbox desktop app since it
launched:

\- Good experience, fairly regular releases, stability increasing with each
one.

\- Stagnation in releases, but app is in a fairly good working state.

\- Out of the blue, big update comes in, application changes completely. For
the worse, as it loses a bunch of features and is sporting a far less polished
look and finish. I believe the new version is now an OS X native application
as opposed to a webview.

\- Frantic releases over the following weeks, killing some bugs but
introducing more.

\- Stagnation in releases, in its fairly broken state.

\- This announcement.

From the outside, it looks like a case of an engineering team that decided it
would rewrite the application from scratch in the native stack. Widely
regarded as a bad idea. [1]

After numerous months spent burning money in refactoring and rebuilding
features that already existed and worked, management pressure builds up, and
they decide to release their "good enough" native version. After torturous
weeks of back to back frantic releases to fix all of the complaints coming in,
some factor or another (developer churn possibly) caused them to cease
development and decide to sack the project altogether.

This is of course just speculation, a narrative I made up. That's how it looks
like from the outside to me, but I'd like to hear from the developers inside,
since I know they must be reading this thread.

I loved this application and I'm saddened to have to move away from it.

[1]
[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RewriteCodeFromScratch](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RewriteCodeFromScratch)

~~~
HeavenFox
I worked on the desktop client for several months up until the first public
beta release.

No, Mailbox for Mac has been a fully native app since inception - which is how
you get those nice fluid gestures.

What happened next I have no idea, since I left the company. If I have to
guess, we incurred a lot of technical debts during the sprint to beta, and
they were doing some major rewriting to fix them. Before it was finished, the
project was axed. The new version was released nonetheless to support
sunsetting.

~~~
tvararu
The reason I thought the previous version was a webview was due to the not-
really-native-looking settings pane (Cmd+,), which turned into a much more
typical looking one post-update.

Thank you so much for the input, and thanks for helping build something I
enjoyed using.

------
calgoo
I wish they could open source Mailbox at least... That way it might survive.

[1] "Will Mailbox be open-sourced?

Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying
system, but this is ultimately not something we will support."

[1] [https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/](https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/)

~~~
adrianmacneil
I imagine Mailbox has a heavy server component, which would be non-trivial to
get set up and running on your own.

~~~
slang800
That's hardly a reason to not open-source. You're not required to provide
support just because you release your source code. Even a dump of their
repositories would be useful for people who are interested in Mailbox.

~~~
exelius
No; but often the server components are heavily tied to some other proprietary
libraries that they're not ready to open source. They could remove all
proprietary code from their codebase, but that costs money - likely more than
they were willing to spend on this product.

Unless open source is part of your marketing strategy (which means the effort
would have a budget), it's really difficult to open source an existing
commercial application.

~~~
joering2
That's a speculation on your part.. and PR spin-off on theirs.

Nobody asked them to support it, or whatever. Just dump the damn thing online
so others can pick up and continue to "help fight your inbox to zero".

Clearly their intention here was profits and since they didn't see any - they
kill it off. They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email either.

I wanted to get my company (over 3,000 users) off DropBox long time ago after
each update comes with new issues. But this just broke camel's back. I will
make the switch happen this weekend.

~~~
exelius
> Clearly their intention here was profits and since they didn't see any -
> they kill it off. They won't do it so nobody else should try to safe email
> either.

Um, of course their intentions were profit? Dropbox is a for-profit company,
nobody ever questioned their intentions as being anything else.

And it's not pure speculation; I've worked on enough internally-developed
products to know it's not always feasible to open source an entire service
offering after the fact. It's expensive enough to do between code scrubbing,
legal reviews, etc. that you're generally only going to do it for strategic
reasons (i.e. you know you can never make money doing it but want to
commoditize the market space to hamper a competitor's growth, you want the
community to help support your infrastructure, or your business model is open
source + support).

------
avitzurel
This is very sad news and I don't really get the decision.

The thing with Mailbox is that it was truly a great product before it switched
hands to Dropbox. Once they bought it, that was the end of good functions and
the product only went downhill from there.

There's a lot of potential with email clients that will help you work better,
Mailbox was definitely one of those products that helped. With good clients
for Mac and PC along with smartphones it would also be profitable IMHO.

The only thing I can think of is that Dropbox is headed for major firing
rounds and they want to save up on resources.

I have switched to Airmail on my Mac and I am much happier now.

~~~
austenallred
I'm still hoping they'll sell them to someone.

Dropbox is obviously planning to go a different direction with its core
product strategy, so that makes sense to me, but those products were too good
to just let die. I'm sure someone would be willing to take them off of
Dropbox's hands.

~~~
avitzurel
That would be the rational thing to do. I don't believe it will happen though.
If it was going to happen it would before they announced they're shutting it
down.

I just don't get how you can spend 100m$ on something and just let it die.
What did Dropbox get out of this deal?

SV is depressing sometimes.

~~~
nimrod0
They got the brains and patents (if applicable).

------
pkamb
I thought Carousel looked really cool, eagerly installed it on release.

Then I discovered that when Carousel is installed, the Dropbox app stops
automatically uploading photos from your phone. You have to now open Carousel
to do so. Broke my existing upload process, and due to iOS permissions for the
new app or not launching it frequently or something the new Carousel upload
process wasn't reliable.

Discovered this by noticing that weeks of pictures weren't backed up to
Dropbox. Glad I didn't lose my phone.

Ended up just deleting the Carousel app rather than figuring it out. The
Dropbox app started syncing reliably again.

~~~
itslennysfault
I had the same experience. I really liked Carousel. It was a great way to
organize my photos, but like you said it totally disables auto-sync.

~~~
gcr
On iOS at least, apps can't run in the background. Carousel could only upload
photos when you open it (or, as a workaround, when your GPS location changes
if you've given that permission).

Carousel's "Flashback -- Discover This Day in the Past Year" feature strikes
me as a very clever social workaround since it gets you to open the app at
least once a week.

The Dropbox iOS app has the same limitation. Presumably you opened it more to
do unrelated tasks, so it makes a lot of sense to bundle them.

Google Photos has the same limitation as well on iOS. I find Carousel's
syncing and Google Photos' syncing seem to be roughly on par with each other.

------
Lazare
Crap. I absolutely _adored_ Mailbox; it did everything I wanted, but
especially:

1) The ability to snooze emails

2) A really nice UI on both OS X and Android letting me quickly swipe emails
to archive or snooze them.

3) A unified inbox that showed multiple email accounts as a single inbox.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a mail client that meets these
requirements? I'm quite happy to pay.

Edit: Google Inbox doesn't have a unified inbox, which drives me nuts, and
nothing else I know of has message snoozing. ANY suggestions welcomed.

~~~
cwe
Outlook. Seriously. It supports multiple accounts I believe (I only use my
work exchange account so not positive), and it has scheduling of messages. The
scheduling hasn't synced very well to the desktop version in my experience,
but a lot of people have called it the best gmail client on iOS.

~~~
Lazare
Well, I guess it's worth a shot.

Although my primary OS for dealing with email is OS X and I see the OS X app
is $130? Acceptable for a good Mailbox replacement, but a bit pricy for a
gamble. :(

And "The scheduling hasn't synced very well to the desktop version in my
experience" worries me a lot.

~~~
mynameisvlad
He means the Outlook iOS/Android app, which was a 3rd party app Microsoft
bought (Accompli) and further upgraded by the people at Sunrise Calendar (also
bought out) to make the app that it is today. Outlook for OSX, though, is
still the classic Microsoft Office for OSX app, so it doesn't have any of
those upgrades. The iOS app is my daily driver, and it works _splendidly_.

------
aashaykumar92
Sad, Drew had said it's not going anywhere when the acquisition was announced.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381572)

~~~
jacquesm
Executive promises at the time of an acquisition mean absolutely nothing,
their main goal is to reduce break-off risk (both of users and employees) due
to change of control.

~~~
staunch
It's far more likely that he was overly optimistic about Mailbox's chances of
success at Dropbox. Founders are notoriously delusional about this kind of
thing.

Dropbox wasn't worried about maintaining the small existing Mailbox userbase,
they were betting they could grow it by millions of users. When it didn't
work, it messed up their plans (and promises).

 _Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity._

~~~
jacquesm
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

As a CEO I'm not sure which of those two explanations I'd prefer.

~~~
joslin01
Stupidity because people who act in malice are dicks. You can choose to be
nice, but it's inevitable you'll be stupid at one point or another.

------
chollida1
Is this Dropbox cleaning up their balance sheet in an attempt to IPO?

There's a pretty loud rumor floating around, heck it was reported on CNBC
today, that Dropbox can't come close to IPOing anywhere near its $10 Billion
dollar valuation. Though Fidelity did mark them up slightly at the end of
November!

And for better or worse, they are going to be closely compared to Box, which
has been a pretty big disaster since IPOing. For the record, BOX is valued at
1.65 Billion currently. And it has an awful lot of short interest current( a
measure of the ratio of shares sold short vs the total outstanding shares).

~~~
gcr
On the other hand, I thought Dropbox was squashing Box like a bug in terms of
users. Not sure if that translates to revenue though. Wouldn't investors want
the most profitable company to IPO?

------
mkhalil
This is the reason why I stick to the native mail on iOS or Gmail app for the
emails i need instantly without fetch. Yeah they may have their cons, but I
don't have to worry about Apple dropping Mail app.

Mail should be simple, I think the best apps are the lightweight ones that
don't require too much work to keep alive, and definitely don't require a
backend server process.

Also, Mailbox had access to all your mail, and when Dropbox bought it while
having M̶r̶s̶Miss.Rice on the board of directors, well...that just felt yucky.

My simple solution to keeping my mail under control:

 _ONE_ filter on the Gmail side of things, called "Good Spam". Any reoccurring
email I like, but don't want to keep manually archiving everyday, SKIPS inbox
and goes into that folder. The filter is literally a huge list of email
addresses from senders. (ex snippet "....events@eventful.com
mail@e.groupon.com radioshack@em.radioshack.com Hewlett-
Packard@us.newsgram.hp.com....")

Anytime I get an email I don't consider "Good Spam" I unsubscribe from.

Then on my phone, I just get important or new mail.

BONUS from using filter instead of unsubscribing: When you are in that store
and you need that BANANA REPUBLIC coupon at the register, you still have
access to it. Open email app, search for it, and use it. And you don't need to
keep looking at their emails everyday just to archive it. Or in case of
Mailbox, swiping right....thumbs get tired too.

~~~
keehun
What I've started doing is to filter via whether or not they're in my
contacts. I have a folder (I don't use Gmail) where all non-contact-
originating email goes into. That folder doesn't even ring up the new email
count.

I've immensely enjoyed this new system. I, like you, immediately unsubscribe
from things that I don't even care about in the "good-spam" box. Only I am too
lazy (or don't care enough) to maintain a huge list of email addresses to
filter out. I'd rather err on the side of too much filtering (e.g. not in my
contacts) since I still get it on my phone/desktop. If I ever want something
to hit me right away, I just add it to my contacts, even if it's a
company/"good-spam" address.

~~~
mkhalil
Nice. White list approach as oppose to black list. Makes sense. I would
probably end up still using a filter though, because I don't want to have so
many contacts for people I barely contact.

------
chrisau
Assholes.

Getting sick of big companies buying great small products, and shutting them
down after "trying" to make them work out.

Still hadn't had time to get over MS killing Sunrise, and now this.

~~~
morganvachon
Indeed, I had finally taken the plunge on Carousel for its killer feature:
Freeing up space on my 16GB iPhone while having the photos instantly available
if I needed them. Carousel was a breath of fresh air; it had no issues with
backing up photos over WiFi or cellular data, unlike the main Dropbox app. Now
it's back to the unreliable and slow Dropbox app for photo syncing.

------
wpietri
For fans of the genre, I strongly recommend Our Incredible Journey:

[http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

------
colmvp
Mailbox and Sunrise, two productivity apps that I liked, got acquired (Dropbox
2013, Microsoft 2015), and discontinued in 2015.

~~~
benjarrell
I'm still using Sunrise to this day, is there an announcement about it being
discontinued?

~~~
rodgerd
Apparently so: [http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/10/microsoft-announces-
plans...](http://appadvice.com/appnn/2015/10/microsoft-announces-plans-to-
discontinue-the-popular-sunrise-calendar-app)

(Unwelcome) news to me.

~~~
torbit
so Sunrise gets sunset :)

------
noinput
@teej nailed it:

> teej: "... They signed the keys away to Drew Houston and the management team
> at Dropbox. Mailbox dies the moment Drew decides to kill it."

> dhouston: it's not going anywhere :)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381671)

------
rifung
Can anyone explain to me, someone who's more than happy with GMail, what these
apps offer that aren't being offered by Google/Microsoft?

It seems like Mailbox had a loyal following but I guess my email use is just
not sophisticated enough to understand.

~~~
smackfu
It's related to a productivity strategy called "inbox zero" where you
immediately deal with every email in your inbox when you check your mail.
"Deal with" might be to delete it if it's junk, respond immediately if you
can, or defer it to later. A lot of these clients are aimed at making this
process as fast and efficient as possible. So taking actions on an email are
often just a swipe, and there are facilities to defer an email to a particular
time, or adding it to a to-do list.

It's mainly intended at people who get too much email.

~~~
aldanor
Ain't Google's Inbox app the same sort of thing?

~~~
smackfu
Yes, first came "inbox zero" as a concept (2006) then came Mailbox (Jan 2013)
then came Google Inbox (Oct 2014).

------
coldtea
The message from this: outside of backup, Dropbox can't/won't sustain a small
scale but profitable business for the long term (e.g. Basecamp style).

So don't even consider adopting and trusting their new "Paper" collaboration
offering.

~~~
free2rhyme214
Yeah. Dropbox Paper is like Box Notes. It's nifty but why switch from Google
docs?

~~~
wodenokoto
Because your documents are already in dropbox. I believe that is the main
value proposition.

~~~
free2rhyme214
How is that a value proposition? You still have to open Office to see your
word, excel or ppt docs.

DB simply looks at what Box is doing and puts it on their backlog in JIRA.

------
fooly_wk
For those disppointed with Mailbox's abandonment, I'd love to hear your
feedback on Polymail ([https://polymail.io](https://polymail.io)). We're in
private Alpha right now, but we have many similar features to Mailbox like
Read Later + some better ones like Email Tracking & Send Later. Feel free to
DM me on Twitter ([https://twitter.com/foolywk](https://twitter.com/foolywk))
if you'd like to be added to our next Alpha release!

~~~
wodenokoto
I'm not really sure how we are supposed to give feedback to a closed alpha
test, but many people here are discussing the business viability of native
email clients, so maybe you can talk about the market and what the business
prospects are when entering this market.

~~~
fooly_wk
There's definitely a large subset of the market which expect not to pay for an
email client, but there are many email products available now with many paying
customers e.g. yesware, streak, sidekick, etc. There are certainly ways of
capturing revenue from the email marketing, but I think that Mailbox was too
focused particularly on the entire 'Inbox Zero' aspect of the product and
never expanded much beyond that.

------
rangibaby
That's abrupt. It wasn't that long ago I was bribed into downloading Mailbox
by some notification in the Dropbox app.

Bummer too, because I really like it. They're not even going to leave it and
let it slowly decay until time takes it's toll and nature wins like with
Sparrow.

"As you evaluate alternatives, you might consider the stock apps like iOS Mail
(Apple) and Gmail (Android)"

I guess they didn't have much time to research other mail clients.

~~~
huac
I ctrl-F'd "Android" \- Mailbox is the best email app for Android other than
Inbox - which doesn't work with my school's Google Apps configuration.

Shame that there are no other good Android apps, but iOS has a few.

------
27182818284
I've been a Dropbox user for--I don't know how long. A long time. I would say
since...maybe 2009?

I do not know what those products are for sure. By their names I'm guessing
something with photos and something with email. I feel like an old evangelist
like myself would have known more about those products. Thus, I wonder if this
was a marketing failure as much as a product-market-fit failure.

~~~
chungy
Likewise, I've had Dropbox since around 2009 or 2010, never even heard of
Mailbox until now. I actively avoided Carousel solely because of how much the
mobile Dropbox app was trying to push it on me, my reaction was more-or-less
"What? I'm not changing my workflow." and ignored it. Might have been a shame,
but it didn't feel welcoming with how they tried to do that...

~~~
Eric_WVGG
A while back Dropbox said that they had grander ambitions that being a single-
product (Dropbox the service) company, rather they wanted to be a sort of
Microsoft, Lotus or Borland of the current generation.

This statement preceded the acquisition of Carousel (a sort of alternative to
iPhoto and Picasa built on Dropbox [the service]) Mailbox (an alternative
email client, no technical connection to Dropbox [the service]).

So yeah maybe this strategy isn’t panning out? I dunno, just irritated that
the default move for abandonware isn’t open-sourcing it.

------
sgarrity
I haven't used Mailbox, but I'm glad to see Carousel being rolled back into
the main Dropbox app. It's already good for photos, and didn't warrant a
separate app.

------
vessenes
Ooh, this is very sad. I rely heavily on Mailbox and its follow-up
functionality. Any advice for ios-capable replacements out there?

EDIT: The FAQ recommends Google Inbox, Apple Mail and Outlook. I just looked
at Inbox again after quite a while away, and it seems like it may be feature-
complete with Mailbox.

~~~
btmills
Snooze functionality became my most important feature after using Mailbox. I
switched to Outlook several months ago because it supports snoozing and
archiving with the same swipe gestures, and it allows me to add all of the
mail accounts Mailbox didn't support. The UX isn't quite as polished as
Mailbox's, but that's improving regularly.

------
nathan_f77
I only recently switched to Mailbox because I got tired of an annoying UI bug
in Sparrow that was never going to be fixed.

I was just starting to get used to Mailbox. What mail app should I be using
now?

~~~
reverend_gonzo
Check out Spark by Readdle. It replaces Mailbox fairly well.

~~~
eevilspock
Agreed! It had great functionality, including customizabiltit and the best
approach to separating wheat from chaff I've seen to date. Spark is entirely
client side (Though they're hinting at adding server-side features; as long as
it doesn't include server-side access to my email no problem).

Mac client slated for early 2016. They support plain IMAP (yes!) and even
Exchange.

------
Animats
_" In 2013, we acquired Mailbox ... In 2014, we launched Carousel ... Mailbox
will be shut down on February 26th, 2016, and Carousel will be shut down on
March 31st, 2016."_

Someone should track the lifespan of cloud products. It's not long; the median
is probably less than five years. Dependence on a cloud product is risky. They
can go away so fast.

------
emitstop
Not surprised at all, there hasn't been any updates or improvements in awhile,
especially for the desktop app, it's nearly unuseable with its current bugs.
Seemed like Dropbox never put enough resources into it for it to really get
off the ground.

I've switched to airmail for the time being, but I'm definitely going to miss
snoozing emails to specific dates.

------
orky56
This Gmail strategy helped me transition from Mailbox:
[http://lifehacker.com/this-gtd-workflow-is-how-i-finally-
got...](http://lifehacker.com/this-gtd-workflow-is-how-i-finally-got-my-email-
inbox-u-1505884967)

Essentially use Multiple Inboxes as well as some filters/labels to create the
basic GTD categories. I've modified it to use Labels since I find the various
stars inefficient. I have inboxes for "Work On" (label: _Priority), "Someday"
(label:_Someday), "Waiting" (label:*Waiting), and "Reference" (is:starred).
This combined with services offered from Boomerang
([http://www.boomeranggmail.com/](http://www.boomeranggmail.com/)) get pretty
close to what I was trying to accomplish with Mailbox. It's not as elegant but
I don't have to worry about using a proprietary email client that might not be
around.

------
TheBiv
Here is more detail about Dropbox Paper:
[http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-paper-team-
collab...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-paper-team-
collaboration-tools/)

~~~
nikolay
They will focus on Paper... until they decide to axe that, too , when they see
they can't compete with Google. I think the axe-happy mentality sends the
wrong signals when considering products. I'm not gonna use Paper, really, I'm
gonna phase off Dropbox as well. I'm not happy they killed Carousel. It was a
small simple product - maybe they need a couple of developers to keep it
going. It doesn't have to be fancy. I just worked and worked well.

~~~
gcr
> It was a small simple product.

Dropbox itself is just a folder that syncs. Small and simple, right?

Carousel is just a camera roll that syncs. Small and simple, right?

There is an amazing amount of engineering and planning that goes into both
products though.

~~~
nikolay
Well, compared to Mailbox and Paper, Carousel is simple. Dropbox is not as
simple as Carousel itself. There are much more complex apps developed by
single developers than Carousel, for example, and many are not even developed
for profit. There's very little investment that Dropbox has to do to keep
Carousel running, but they decided not to and compromise a lot more than they
expect!

------
ptio
Oh man this is sad news. I'm currently using Mailbox as my default mail app on
Android. I'll pay for it is there was an option.

------
scotchio
Cool products coming and going doesn't really even surprise me anymore. I've
become a little jaded to the whole come and go of all the different tools and
apps.

Anyway, if you guys haven't checked out Boxer [1] for email, it's the best. I
went a little obsessive, tested every email client on iOS, and this one was
without a doubt is my favorite:

* Push notifications

* Doesn't hijack labels with archive/to-do/completed nonsense

* Universal inbox

* Nice labeling/archiving/customizing via swiping

* Beautiful interface

I love it and highly recommend

[1] [http://www.getboxer.com/](http://www.getboxer.com/)

~~~
desireco42
Check this out

[http://www.getboxer.com/boxer-joins-vmware/](http://www.getboxer.com/boxer-
joins-vmware/)

how likely is that they will shutter it down, rebrand it in a way that we/me
will not like it.

~~~
nullrouted
It will be brought into Airwatch and used exclusively for that.

------
imron
> _The Carousel and Mailbox teams have built products that are loved by many
> people_

And now those people will hate Dropbox.

~~~
jheriko
thankfully many is very different to most.

its a pretty good approximation that compared to dropbox /nobody/ uses those
products.

~~~
imron
That's right, and it sucks to be those users - I'm not one of them, but I have
experienced similar things in the past which led to a vehement dislike of the
parent company that did it.

~~~
jheriko
sure. i don't disagree, but i can see why people would make these decisions.
its a tradeoff between small numbers of angry users and burning money on
something that is failing.

------
ktamura
When Carousel came out, I thought it was a great opportunity for Dropbox to go
up the stack and blogged about it:
[http://kiyototamura.tumblr.com/post/82662241570/dropboxs-
car...](http://kiyototamura.tumblr.com/post/82662241570/dropboxs-carousel-is-
different)

Ultimately, I am beginning to think that Dropbox simply does not have the
product DNA =/

------
robocaptain
Ug. Carousel solved so many problems for me. Is it just that people don't like
having multiple apps? Is the barrier to entry too high? I thought carousel
struck a nice balance in not really forcing anyone to use the app, if they
were simply on the receiving end.

I hope Dropbox keeps their word on incorporating the carousel functionality
into the main app. I don't particularly care what they want to call it.

------
joshcrowder
Frustrating as its still my favourite mail app. Although development has
definitely slowed down (for desktop at least) over the past 6 months.

------
sherifmansour
I've always been puzzled at the two acquisitions. I know it's easier to say
this in hindsight but there are a few reflections many had upon hearing the
initial acquisition of those tools:

* So you've acquired a Gmail client - why? Surely whatever good comes out of that Google would just re-create into Gmail. Sure enough: Inbox. I'm not even sure how this would have fitted into the Dropbox strategy? I doubt they would have wanted to be acquired by Gooogle. I doubt they would have wanted to compete in the email space... If it was just to get attachments from email surely there are many other ways to solve this problem.

* Second thought: Dropbox has acquired a photo sharing and organization app. Surely they don't think they will win over Facebook, iPhoto, Flickr... What for? Store the photos? Even if it's an awesome product, don't they just risk Apple Photos getting better? Or wait... Here comes Google Photos.

Inbox. Google Photos. iPhotos. Facebook Moments. It feels like both Mailbox
and Carosel were just ticking timebombs.

------
marknutter
Why, oh why can't companies just focus on their core competency? Does Dropbox
really consider the sync-and-share problem _solved_?

------
argonaut
FWIW, a friend told me Mailbox was dead (the team had been moved off the
product) back in June, so this was internally known for months.

~~~
minimaxir
Relevant Twitter discussion:
[https://twitter.com/mikeisaac/status/673918795707244544](https://twitter.com/mikeisaac/status/673918795707244544)

------
tedmiston
> We’ve come to believe that the best way for us to improve people’s
> productivity going forward is to streamline the workflows that generate so
> much email in the first place.

AKA Paper --> [https://paper.dropbox.com](https://paper.dropbox.com)

I don't know if I understand what Dropbox is anymore. It's gone from: syncing
file storage --> a decentralized app ecosystem that in some ways competes with
PaaS (effectively an OS [1]) --> document and media collaboration tools.

They might be one of the only companies whose products compete with Apple,
Google, Microsoft, Amazon...

Just to clarify, I think they've done all of these things well.

1:
[http://scripting.com/liveblog/users/davewiner/2015/12/07/059...](http://scripting.com/liveblog/users/davewiner/2015/12/07/0593.html)

------
orrinward
I'm now getting nervous about Hackpad. Been using it for years and love it to
bits. Another Dropbox acquihire...

~~~
bengotow
I'm afraid Hackpad is also dead—Dropbox open sourced it, and no one has
touched it since October:
[https://github.com/dropbox/hackpad](https://github.com/dropbox/hackpad)

------
xrjn
What are the chances that these go down the path of HackPad and be turned into
open source projects? I think it's a win-win situation if companies, such as
Google and now Dropbox: let go of the responsibility of maintaining it and
allow the project to live on in the hands of the community.

~~~
calgoo
[https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/](https://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/)

Will Mailbox be open-sourced?

Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying
system, but this is ultimately not something we will support.

------
cognivore
Awesome. Hey, start-up type peoples. Good luck getting me to use any of your
nifty new software. Cause every time I do, and invest my time, data, and
learning in you, you sell out then disappear.

There's fool me twice thing in here, but I'm not that inspired to be clever
with it.

------
plehoux
"But as we deepened our focus on collaboration, we realized there’s only so
much an email app can do to fundamentally fix email."

We beg to differ. We built a new email client around the very idea that it
could fix team collaboration: [https://missiveapp.com](https://missiveapp.com)

The thing is… with Sparrow, Mailbox and countless others before, it is getting
really hard for a team like us to convince people to invest their time into
our new product. People are increasingly worried that we will just fold/sell
in the coming months and that their time will be lost.

Establishing credibility in the email space is hard and takes time, there is
no shortcut, announcements like this one doesn't help us.

------
SneakerXZ
It is no surprise, when one-product companies do other products they don't
last for long.

Only reason why I still use Dropbox is their client for Mac and and simple web
interface and some other small features. I don't understand why nobody else is
able to do it...

~~~
danieldk
_I don 't understand why nobody else is able to do it..._

Because they don't care, need to, or want to? Google and Microsoft are
competing with Dropbox on economics of scale and perhaps as a loss-leader. A
lot of people are willing to forgo peer to peer LAN sync or block-level
syncing when the cost is much lower. Additionally, both Google Drive and
OneDrive have an integrated office suite, which adds value for a lot of
people.

Moreover, if you can get away with a weak client, it's an advantage. Someone
who has all their data synced to disk can easily switch. Someone who has their
data primarily in someone's cloud cannot as easily.

------
nikolay
So stupid, really! Carousel is the only Dropbox product I use and it works
really great!

~~~
jwcooper
They're killing the apps I actually use from them. Carousel was quite useful
for all of the photos I've uploaded, and handles uploading the photos pretty
well too.

This is finally giving me the opportunity to explore using some of the other
cloud storage such as Google Drive or even iCloud where I can save some money
each month as well.

~~~
nikolay
Yes. They are shooting themselves into the feet. Too bad I pay annually! They
won't be able to realize I left them until next year! I even got one extra
year from Dell's Black Friday. Urgh!

------
smnrchrds
Another one bites the dust...

I still remember the discussion when the acquisition was announced:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381572](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381572)

I hope it was really not going anywhere.

~~~
timdiggerm
>Did you not RTFA? >> " To be clear, Mailbox is not going away.

When people say stuff like this when a startup gets acquired, don't believe
them.

~~~
rdancer
If you put a few in the back of someone's head, technically they're not
_going_ anywhere either.

------
reverend_gonzo
That is unfortunate. Mailbox was, and still is, (barring a few bugs) one of
the better, Zero-inbox mail apps for IOS.

Spark by Readdle has taken up slack there, and they look like they're building
it in a way that will actually be monetizable.

~~~
zyxley
> Spark

Do you know if they're going to do a desktop version too?

(Or, to be more pessimistic: "How long until that gets acquihired and killed
off too?")

~~~
reverend_gonzo
I don't know about desktop. I just use my phone/ipad for 90% of my email, so
that works fine by me.

As for being hired, Readdle makes a ton of ios apps, and are profitable in
their own right. Also, while Spark is free, some of the features they've
hinted to as coming in the future will likely be in-app purchases / upgrades,
that will allow it to be profitable as well.

------
tomc1985
It used to be when the company went out of business, their software still
worked...

~~~
TeMPOraL
Now the trend is to export the cloud-dependent, you-buy-only-license model to
the physical world. Welcome to the future.

------
grandalf
I've been using carousel and have switched a lot of family members to it. I
was using Snapjoy before (which Dropbox acquired and killed), and had done the
same thing.

I find the announcement about Carousel extremely disappointing. I'm definitely
going to think twice about using Dropbox for anything other than simple file
storage in the future.

Pictures are peoples' lives, their families, and their memories. This is a big
part of file storage and I thought Carousel was a superb product on desktop
and mobile.

Sorry to vent but I haven't been this disappointed about a product being
killed (for no apparent reason) in a long time.

~~~
ssharp
This is one of the reasons I just accept the flaws with iCloud Photos and go
with it. My other family members can use it easily enough and I don't have to
worry about it going away.

------
tammer
Perhaps I'm wearing rose-colored glasses as a non-gmailer, but I think in the
end everyone is served better by more difficult types of innovation. I look
forward to seeing what Paper turns out to be.

------
orliesaurus
Wow - feels bad for those folks that got acqui-hired and now see their product
being "laid off"

 _RIP_ Mailbox, you were cool to play with for a few hours that one stormy day
I decided to install you

~~~
minimaxir
Mailbox/Orchestra was not an acquihire for pennies; it was a normal
acquisition for _$100 million_ : [http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/mailbox-
cost-dropbox-around...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/15/mailbox-cost-dropbox-
around-100-million/)

~~~
georgespencer
Mainly stock. They acquired the engineers for a tiny fraction of Dropbox's
valuation. (Today: $10bn.)

------
DomBlack
I've been looking to move to FastMail for a while, but Mailbox was holding me
back (the whole zero-inbox with the remind me this weekend stuff).

Does anybody know of a good zero-inbox client for FastMail?

~~~
mark_l_watson
If you want a zero inbox client, then InBox on top of gmail is pretty good.

I use FastMail as my primary email, and I don't quite do zero inbox. I
probably have on average 5 to 8 emails in my inbox, and a few stick around for
days.

It takes some effort and overhead but I am trying to move away from email as
being a "memory box" for organizing my life. Instead I am using subject
organized markdown files stored in encrypted cloud storage where I maintain
tasks, research notes, etc. since these are synced on my laptops, I can search
them with spotlight, cortana, etc.

Combined with FastMail, this scheme keeps me organized. As easy as using InBox
for email and TODOs? No, but so far it is working for me.

------
emailforward
We're a group of folks interested in solving this problem - perhaps by
building a stable self-funded business around the most widely requested email
client features, or perhaps by driving an open source movement in the
community. Maybe both. Help us help you.

[http://goo.gl/forms/9AVIGXNgkc](http://goo.gl/forms/9AVIGXNgkc)

Note: All responses to this survey will be shared with the Hacker News
community within 24-48 hours after initial posting.

------
ColinWright
Significant amount of discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10690716](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10690716)

------
jfernandez
This is a huge blow, this was the mail app I used exclusively on the phone.
What's the best alternative? Inbox? It seemed a bit complex when I first tried
it out.

------
ents
Such a shame. Only snoozing system that works for iOS and Mac without
injecting additional emails into the thread to return them to the inbox. Ugh.

------
univalent
This stinks. I was just getting used to Mailbox. Why buy these smaller
companies unless you have a long term plan on how its going to be NPV +ve?

------
jonknee
I would have guessed Mailbox could have been sold instead of shuttered. Maybe
MAU has slid lately, but I thought they had a lot of happy users.

On the other hand, it's amusing to note the Valley inflation that has happened
since Mailbox was acquired in early 2013. It was for ~$100M which seems like
chump change in the Age of The Unicorn that we now find ourselves in.

------
erikb
It always feels awkward when reading such a note, seeing that it gets a lot of
upvotes and never heard about any of these products before. What was mailbox?
Like many other people I'm pretty unhappy with the mailbox choices I have
nowadays. In fact, I have to use four(!) mailbox programs to handle everything
I need. Pain in the trashcan, I tell ya.

------
dvcrn
That is very sad. Carousel was a essential part of my photo editing and backup
workflow. Maybe need to investigate switching back to drive. The problem with
them was though that photos backed up with "Google Photos" didn't appear
inside drive and vice-versa. Did they fix that by now?

Mailbox never worked fine for me and had bugs in every corner.

------
hcurtiss
I don't know much about Mailbox, but I was an enthusiastic Carousel user . . .
until Google released Photos. With Google Drive integration (both up and
down), way better search, easy sharing (without requiring a recipient Google
account), and photo editing, I dropped Carousel like a rock. I suspect I
wasn't the only one.

------
shinratdr
Makes you wonder why they even bought them in the first place. There was no
possible integration there, the only move was expansion into other markets.

So buy them, wait two years, then kill them off? Great use of funds there
Dropbox, I guess you put the stellar bunch in charge of the development
roadmap in charge of acquisitions too.

------
rdancer
The single best software product since GMail, and they've shuttered it. It's a
sad day for our industry.

------
dordoka
They have opened a community thread in their forums. [0]

[0] [https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-
us/community/posts/203840...](https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-
us/community/posts/203840413-Saying-Goodbye)

------
goeric
Despite all the bugs and the short-falls of the Mac app update, it had the
best snooze feature that I've come to live by in my email workflow. It looks
like Polymail is an evolved Mailbox (with a eerily similar design/features)
and Nylas N1 has a lot of potential as well.

------
skhatri11
I loved Mailbox. Really disappointing. What do folks suggest we use as our
replacement email app? Problem with Apple's stock Mail app is that Google
doesn't allow push email. Yes, those few seconds before I receive an email are
very precious to me :)

~~~
rickyc091
Wait up, you can setup apple's stock mail to push via the google exchange
server.

~~~
rangibaby
I thought that one cool trick stopped working for new accounts a long time
ago?

------
Killah911
Mailbox helped me get control of an otherwise unmanageable email problem. Brad
Feld recently recommended outlook. Which is funny because an old version of
outlook was the thing that created my email monster & subsequent search for a
better email client.

------
aylmao
[https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-
app/sha...](https://www.change.org/p/dropbox-open-source-mailbox-
app/share?after_sign_exp=default&just_signed=true)

------
cat-dev-null
An open-source Mailbox clone could be popular, and a way for mobile
(iOS/Android/etc.) developers to show their chops.

The self-starter types of people tend to route around obstructions and
unpopular decisions by doing it themselves, better.

------
dclowd9901
Stepping off the pity train, what out there is a good replacement for Mailbox?

~~~
slang800
You can look at [https://github.com/nylas/n1](https://github.com/nylas/n1)
(also mentioned elsewhere in this thread)

------
flyrain
That's really bad news for me. I've used Mailbox everyday for a long time,
before it joined Dropbox. I am really happy with it, and never tried to switch
to another mail client.

------
Killah911
That sucks, I really like Mailbox. I guess outlook it is on iOS.

------
Polarity
Don't use anything that's not open source. Period.

------
lechevalierd3on
Part of me is really mad, the iOS app works well and does the work. Part of me
is liberated, the OSX app is buggy as hell and drives me nuts every day.

Apple MailI now?

------
squegles
This is really disappointing. I have been an avid Mailbox user since beta.
Does anyone have any other mail client recommendations for iOS?

------
danieltoshea
It is too bad they decided not to open source Mailbox. I would have liked to
run my own mailbox service perhaps as a docker container.

------
refriedbeans3
Would be great if they Dropbox opensourced Mailbox's codebase. I don't want to
have to go back to apple mail...

------
pilif
At least in case of mailbox, I would say they were sherlocked by Google Inbox:
nearly as good an UI but without the need to share access to email with a
third party.

I really never liked that aspect of mailbox and I thus never used it with my
primary mailbox, which meant that I practically haven't used it at all.

The moment Inbox came out for google apps, I started using it to the point
where it is now my primary means for accessing my mail.

------
benburton
Good to hear it's finally official. The Mac desktop app has been unusable for
the past 6 months.

------
thejerz
Can someone in the HN community please just remake Sparrow? I'll give you my
money right now.

------
free2rhyme214
I'd love to see what else Dropbox is working on besides Paper and enterprise
features.

------
tuananh
Monetization around email is just hard. Except for one like Google.

------
finalight
erm, what? I don't even there's mailbox and carousel

i've been just using the basic feature of dropbox, which is just
upload/download/sync files

did they put in effort to advertise it?

------
jtwebman
At least they could do was open source it!

------
dutchbrit
Time to make an open-source replacement?

~~~
orliesaurus
or just open source this?

~~~
ptio
Will Mailbox be open-sourced? [1]

Unfortunately not. We gave a lot of thought to open-sourcing the underlying
system, but this is ultimately not something we will support.

[1] [http://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/](http://www.mailboxapp.com/faq/)

------
akulbe
This makes me worry that Dropbox is next.

btsync just became a lot more appealing to me.

------
ucaetano
Is this a sign the Dropbox's diversification strategy into a full
collaboration product failed?

In other words, Dropbox can't move away from being a feature?

~~~
mtgx
Yes.

~~~
johnchristopher
Then Paper is likely going to be next.

