
How Dropbox Will Die - aab1d
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidcoursey/2011/10/18/how-dropbox-will-die/
======
0x12
I wrote something about this in another thread. I don't think dropbox will
die, and here is why:

Dropbox is only a 'feature' if you already have everything else, an operating
system, and an installed base of a large number of devices.

But dropbox the product, not dropbox the feature is what exists today.

Seamless filesharing at an affordable pricepoint (including a free tier)
across _all_ devices and across _all_ major operating systems, including
linux, apple and windows. And that includes versioning and so on.

So it isn't a feature.

Don't forget that the universe of computing is far larger than any single
operating system, no matter how successful, and that this will likely always
be the case.

Dropbox is infrastructure, not a feature. And it's fine to run infrastructure,
you can actually charge for it and people will pay. See also: toll roads,
ISPs, the petroleum industry, your power company and so on.

Commoditizing the essence of storage wasn't such a bad idea at all, and to
turn it into a product, not just a feature is what gives it long term
viability.

Forbes being a print magazine I'd bet good money that Forbes the print edition
will die long before dropbox.

Besides dropbox having about 250 million factors in the equation helping it to
stay alive a little longer Forbes writing about it in two different places on
one day will help dropbox just that much more. There is no such thing as bad
advertising. Plenty of the Forbes visitors reading this might think, ok,
dropbox is going to die, but until then this is mighty handy.

~~~
brianobush
I agree with most of what you write save the fact that Dropbox is not a
feature. I use dropbox constantly to the point it is invisible to my work. My
files move around without me worrying about it. From a consumer point of view
(ie, non-tech) how your files synchronize doesn't matter. The fact that the
files are there when you need them is what matters. In the consumer eye,
Dropbox would be a feature of all their devices.

~~~
0x12
As long as enough people are willing to pay for the 'feature' I'm sure that
the dropbox founders don't care too much what people call it :)

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giffc
I think it is a silly article with a link bait headline. The author has taken
his very narrow use cases and extrapolated it to all users. If he can replace
dropbox with evernote then he is using dropbox in a very different way from
me, not to mention that his implicit message seems to be that all operating
systems are going to become Apple-owned, which is silly. Yes, icloud might
hurt dropbox but that's a far cry from a death knell.

~~~
momoro
Agreed.

The article basically says "I don't pay for dropbox, therefore it will fail."
The backup for this is "Dropbox is a feature, not a product." And "other
companies that I have made this statement about have failed."

Somehow this isn't convincing for me at all.

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bigiain
I've often thought they need a lower tier than the $100/year option. I get a
remarkable amount of value from Dropbox, but somehow knowing I'm only using <
20% of the free tier makes it psychologically difficult to justify paying them
$100/yr. If there were an option to pay $20 or $30 or so for what I'm getting
for free, I'd probably just do it. $100 is a little too far outside the no-
brainer price range for me though... (I guess by the time you get to "9 digit
acquisition offer" size, a "donate via Paypal" button would look pretty low-
rent...)

~~~
aneth
Why would you pay for what they happily offer for free?

~~~
0x12
To make sure they stay in business? I think a lot of people are more than
happy to pay for useful services just to keep them in business. As long as the
utility is larger than the price charged transactions will be made.

One website I'm familiar with has a freemium product, lots of users there pay
just to support the site, even if they never actually use the premium bits.

~~~
aneth
Ok, why would you pay for Dropbox of you didn't have to and they didn't ask
you to? They clearly are not going out of business, at least until something
better comes along.

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wisty
Who cares if it's a feature, not a product? The question is - is it a vertical
or horizontal feature? You can't sell cut-and-paste, because there's no
advantage in having the same cut and paste on every device (no horizontal
advantage), and you'll lose out to the manufactures ability to bake deeply
integrated cut-and-paste into the OS (big advantage for the vertical
implementations). For file sync, there's not a huge need for vertical
integration (OK, Erik Sink's written about how different platforms can be a
PITA - <http://www.ericsink.com/entries/quirky.html>, but it's still possible
if you have the resources and smarts); and you have a huge advantage over
horizontal players, because people want their data safe on different devices.

There's a little company called Microsoft, which sold OSes. The OS is just a
feature of computers. They had the chops to smooth over the vertical issues
(drivers, etc), and got boosted by the horizontal advantages (your programs
work on any computer with Windows). So the OS became a product, not a feature,
because it carved out a large horizontal niche, blowing away the vertically
integrated "features".

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corin_
> _A feature is something that really belongs or can easily be built into
> something that already exists._

Such a loose definition that really can be bent to fit whatever point you want
to make.

Forbes is a feature not a product, Apple could provide the content themselves
and people would just get it on their iPhone, who needs a seperate company
creating it?

Gmail is a feature not a product, it belongs in your phone's operating system
or in a product such as MS Office.

Realistically feature vs. product is subjective, it is entirely down to
whether users want to use a seperate service on an integrated one.

To move away from the web startup world, how about satnav systems as an
example. We all know they can be built into cars, and that's been happening
for a while, and for those cars that have them, it is certainly a feature of
the car. That hasn't killed the companies selling dedicated systems, such as
TomTom.

Or for computer hardware, speakers are really just a feature of your computer,
not a seperate product, yet people still buy speakers that aren't a part of
their PC, just connected to them.

Both these examples, it is possible to get them as features rather than
products, but the demand for standalone products has kept them in existance.

------
antihero
The great thing about Dropbox is that it is a feature. Why? Because it's
decoupled from any other product - with iCloud, I have to buy into the OSX/iOS
ecosystem, which even if I wanted to do, I can't afford. With Dropbox, their
product has no reason not to support as many different OS as possible - so I
can have a mac syncing with an Android, etc.

------
theBobMcCormick
Given that Gartner estimated OSX as having only about 10% of the desk/laptop
market share in 2011, the idea that Dropbox is going to be put out of business
by iCloud is laughably ignorant. Unless Apple decides to make iCloud available
to Windows users, but IMHO that seems unlikely.

The competition isn't much better on the MS side. Windows has the bulk of the
desktop/laptop users, but it's pretty unlikely for them to offer a file sync
client that'll work with the iPhone or Android, and Windows Phone 7 is still
looking for an audience.

I do agree that Dropbox could do a _lot_ to make their person-to-person
sharing more compelling and easy.

~~~
kevinalexbrown
You can use iCloud on Windows... Check the website.

~~~
antihero
Android? Linux? Why would I want to use a cloud service that I can't sync most
of my devices on?

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dustinupdyke
In those critical first few seconds where I am determining if I want to read
further, and instead I have to battle text jumping around because of ads, it
makes me wonder if anyone at Forbes cares about usability.

------
inuhj
"There is also the question of how Dropbox is different from an online backup
service available on a file-by-file basis across multiple machines. That is
how I use Dropbox, only occasionally sharing files in Dropbox with friends and
coworkers."

And with that I realized I had wasted my time reading this article. How can a
journalist be so oblivious to the primary use case of a product?

------
grimen
I use Dropbox as of today, but I would easily - already considered it -
replace it with multiple alternatives. The valuation of Dropbox got me choking
more than LinkedIn valuation; they aren't worth a fraction of that. Every
reality-checked human on this planet knows that. They should have accepted
Apples offer, I think Bitcasa will get it instead.

------
SecretofMana
"(I should probably do a post explaining why Evernote is an application and
Dropbox only a feature.)"

Yes, this would be great. A lot of this article seems to be based on the
author's very loose and short definition of a feature, so I didn't really get
a lot out of it. A comparison would help me better understand the point trying
to be made here.

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ctdonath
If Dropbox solves this, they're golden: <http://xkcd.com/949/>

If they don't, they'll die.

~~~
gergles
Copy it into ~/Dropbox/Public. Right-click, Dropbox, Copy public link. Paste.
Done.

~~~
zwigby
That's assuming you have drop box install on the computer, have an account.
The point is my mom doesn't have a dropbox account so she's still sol in this
example.

This isn't particularly on topic though.

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theSshow
How about Ubuntu One? They have Ubuntu, Windows, iOS, and Android support plus
5 GB of free storage. Mac support doesn't exist yet, but hopefully it'll be
coming soon: <https://one.ubuntu.com/>

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kevinalexbrown
Dropbox executed well. But where can Dropbox expand to? Unless dropbox can get
better and better, eventually the competition will catch up.

Better device and product integration? That will require more and more
cooperation from Windows, Apple, and Google.

~~~
antihero
It already supports Android, OSX, Linux, Windows...

I'd quite like it if they had Music syncing option, mind.

~~~
kevinalexbrown
Music syncing, etc. was what I was referring to. I don't think they'll flame
out right away, but in 5 years, what will they have that doesn't ship with
your OS?

~~~
ja2ke
"Dropbox" is becoming a verb. They need to keep that up, so people ask if
their device has Dropbox, or more appropriately (if incorrectly), ask if it
"can Dropbox?"

It is a feature, a service, but so is Netflix, and Dropbox isn't encumbered by
movie studios. They just have the neat "whoa this is almost magic" part.

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mynameishere
He's correct. Eventually Apple and Microsoft will replace dropbox with tiny,
tiny, tiny branches in their codebases. Unless they come up with a different
product, that's their fate.

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flocial
Box.net is giving away 50GB to anyone that signs up or logs in through their
mobile app. It's an amazing service but Steve Jobs is right when he says it's
a feature.

~~~
mahyarm
Box.net's dropbox-like sync program for desktops is a paid account only
feature too. And your limited to small file sizes. It guts the usefulness of
that 50GB.

------
mahyarm
Is a car stereo head unit a product or a feature?

~~~
0x12
It's a feature of a car when you buy it, it's a product when you upgrade the
crappy unit that came with the car for something a bit nicer.

------
mindstab
iCloud is useless to anyone not exclusively using Apple products. How are they
even a threat right now?

