
Dropbox and Deutsche Telekom partner in Europe - nikunjk
https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/07/dropbox-and-deutsche-telekom-partner-in-europe/
======
oneofthose
Is it just me or is this a 180 degree turn around for Deutsche Telekom? After
the NSA scandal they planned to create an "All-German Internet" [0] (a strange
plan to begin with) but now they seem to be saying: we don't care, let us let
our users store their data in "in data centers across the United States" [1].
As if nothing ever happened.

[0] [http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/deutsche-
telekom...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/deutsche-telekom-
pushes-all-german-internet-safe-from-spying-a-933013.html) [1]
[https://www.dropbox.com/help/7/en](https://www.dropbox.com/help/7/en)

~~~
thirdsun
Oh come on, "email made in Germany" was a marketing stunt all along - a simple
way to benefit from the general rage related to the NSA scandal. It didn't
make any sense in the first place and I'm sure Telekom is very well aware of
this.

~~~
lmedinas
That's right since the "email made in Germany" and "full encryption" only
works between the 3/4 major email providers in Germany.

DT like any other company wants to sell and is pure marketing strategy.

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UVB-76
This is the new Dropbox, with Condoleezza Rice et al on the board.

How do you grow your installed base? Give a big corporation a load of money to
install it on their customers' devices, whether they like it or not.

~~~
hadoukenio
For now, it looks like there's a negative association with Dropbox and
Condoleezza Rice.

When only positive association can be seen on HN, can we then assume that the
DoD's "social media" tools to control conversation has worked?

(remember folks, this is no longer conspiracy territory).

~~~
mkal_tsr
Look at the jtrig section for shaping/honeypots,

[https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/07/14/jtrig...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/07/14/jtrig-
tools-techniques/)

... there's no evidence it is related, but when you think about that and
social media to promote things ... does that mean imgur and dropbox were
planned for honeypots and IPOs? At this point it seems it's best just to
assume everything is compromised and backdoored, oof.

~~~
hadoukenio
Oh. That's the first time I've seen that. Thanks.

Here's some pure speculation:

DEADPOOL - is.gd

MOLTEN-MAGMA - CloudFlare

LONGSHOT - Dropbox

PIXTRIX - Imgur

It's interesting to note that the CEO of is.gd (Nick Craig-Wood) and
CloudFlare's JGC both blogged about solving GCHQ's challenge... maybe they
both got approached?

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sgift
Really, Dropbox? DT? The most shitty telecom provider you could find? The pest
of German internet access? The plague of providers? ... bah. At least it is
only a pre-install program and not something like "we use Telekom for all our
services in Europe". I hope it stays that way.

~~~
UweSchmidt
More realistically, DT is (perceived as) a premium provider and his will
automatically expand Dropbox's market and can be kind of a strategic partner
(what Dropbox supposedly needs since the competition from big players is
heating up). Speculation: Deutsche Telecom's equivalent product was most
likely inferior and hasn't caught on well enough, so that's a win for them as
well.

The general (perceived) shittyness of all providers in general is just a
function of the business model: huge number of customers pay for mostly fixed
costs.

~~~
sgift
> More realistically, DT is (perceived as) a premium provider

Okay, maybe my views about DT are really outdated, but ... premium provider?
Who thinks about DT as a premium provider? The only thing I think about when I
hear Telekom is "incumbent who does everything to stifle competition" and so
do most people I know.

~~~
mobiplayer
Then you don't want to know about Telefonica in Spain or BT in the UK. It's
the same thing with every ex-monopoly.

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aluhut
So actually Dropbox becomes just another preinstalled app and Telecom won't
have to invest into any kind of own cloud infrastructure.

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domiono
After Uber did the same thing a month ago with AT&T
([http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/05/28/uber-partners-
att-p...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/05/28/uber-partners-att-pre-
install-app-new-android-phones/)), this seems like the marketing strategy that
becomes unlocked after hitting a $10B market cap.

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spacefight
The pre-installed apps you can't remove is a pest. Samsung is quite good at it
too - you can't remove the Dropbox app at all without rooting your phone.

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hadoukenio
I guess all of that Internet rage at Dropbox getting Condoleezza Rice has
faded. What's on TV?

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fnom
and there i was hoping they were removing dropbox from their bandwidth
limitations.

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kayman
As a consumer, I find these bundled apps a pain. But a brilliant business move
by dropbox to become ubiqutous as the default file sharing app. If they
rebrand, you won't even know it's dropbox under the hood.

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edpichler
Dropbox, a great company like that don't need this kind of strategy.

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legulere
Meh, I would have expected contracts of the DT bundled with Dropbox

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davedx
Again: [http://www.drop-dropbox.com/](http://www.drop-dropbox.com/)

I will not stop posting this on every Dropbox story on here. I find it
reprehensible. Information from the linked site above on why you should not
use this company's software and move to an alternative such as SpiderOak:

Why Condoleezza Rice should not hold power at Dropbox

* She helped start the Iraq War

"The Iraq War directly caused over 120,000 civilians to die. The total body
count, including soldiers, is nearly 188,000. Nearly 5,000 US and coalition
forces were killed. Over 30,000 were seriously wounded."

* She was involved in the creation of the Bush administration's torture program

"Rice verbally agreed to allow torture methods to be used on captured
suspects, and then lied about the extent to which she was involved."

* Rice not only supports warrantless wiretaps, she authorized several

"Rice not only spoke in favor of the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap
program and expansive domestic surveillance program, she authorized the
warrantless wiretap of UN Security Council members."

Is this really a company you want to trust your data with, let alone your
money given the blood on Rice's hands?

 __

I feel like a broken record posting this each time a story comes up on HN but
I feel it needs to be said so people can be educated about this company.

~~~
Einstalbert
Dropbox makes it easy for me to sync and share files (specifically funny meme
images), I haven't found anything else that works the same way but without
the, ah, interesting government aid.

I've never heard of Spideroak, but it looks like it could be solid competition
for what I want in specific. But now can it be trusted...

~~~
tP5n
the point of spideroak is that you (in theory) shouldn't need to trust "it",
because encryption.

depending on your use case this may or may not be the case anymore though, i
haven't followed the recent development of their android app or their "hive"
feature.

