

Why Dropbox Is A Major Disruption - HSO
http://abovethecrowd.com/2012/02/23/why-dropbox-is-a-major-disruption/

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bittermang
This gets close to the mark. But I feel like chiming in with my two cents on
why I drop $10/mo on Dropbox.

It changed the way I work with files. And it's all the client.

Before Dropbox my options for sharing a file with someone were all cumbersome:

\- CD/DVD/Hard Drive/USB Stick. Unless they're not within 10 miles of me, then
it's a total non starter.

\- Email it. Except if it was too large, it would cause a litany of problems
with mail servers.

\- Toss is up on an FTP. Clunky. FTP is an awful protocol.

\- Any of a dozen file sharing websites that I've never particularity trusted,
and some of which require the person receiving the file to follow some
directions or have an account. No. Just no. The portals for uploading are
clunky.

Then Dropbox happened.

\- Public folders? Genius. Doesn't change my workflow at all, just slap it in
to the folder and copy a link that I can share with anyone. No accounts
required on the other end.

\- Shared folders? Changed how I work forever. Not only do I get an affiliate
bump every time I get someone on the plan, but then it makes the process for
THEM sending ME a file brain dead simple. I have the luxury of having access
to an FTP account and knowing how to use it. Some of my clients and friends do
not. Nor do I expect them to, or even want them to. FTP sucks.

Just today I went over five iterations of a design in real time with a friend,
and all he had to do was stick a JPG in a folder. He didn't even have to tell
me, I got a notification and everything. Awesome!

\- Photos folder? Now I can just drop pics from my SD card and shoot an email
to Mom. No clunky website, uploading, naming, organizing, configuring, and
then finally sending. Just photos, copy to Dropbox folder, send her a link,
done. Moms happy. I'm happy.

Do you notice a theme between those three things? They all get the hell out of
my way. Every other offering on the planet wants to ask me things and do
things and make the cloud storage process cumbersome and heavy. Dropbox, I
move files in to a folder and it takes care of shit. It allows anyone --
regardless of experience level -- to leverage the power of a basic version
control and synchronization system without lifting a finger.

THAT is the secret. Not that it's cloud. Not that it's hip. Not right place or
time. Not hardware/software disassociation philosophic nonsense. It works. And
it doesn't get in your way to get that work done. I don't even have any USB
sticks anymore, and I don't care. Why go to the trouble of plugging in a
device when I could just copy it to a folder?

~~~
vq
If you considered using FTP to share files, why didn't you consider HTTP?

No one can argue against that it's extremely well supported on the client-side
and pushing files to a server (with ssh for example) or hosting a small http-
server locally (twistd for example) is usually no big problem.

~~~
zmmz
> And it's all the client.

I believe the "client" in this case was "customer". Getting somebody to right
click on a folder and selecting 'share in dropbox' is the easiest thing that I
can ask of somebody. All files within that folder will be visible to me, even
if they make changes.

Another key thing with dropbox is that it made sharing files easier by
allowing you to share folders. I, for one, going through the attach -> browse
-> open dialogue for each photo I wanted to show to somebody.

~~~
bittermang
No, I truly believe it's the client. The phone app. The desktop app. It's the
lynchpin that makes all this stuff a breeze. I don't have to tell it anything.
Put photos in the photos folder and they become a photo gallery. Share a
folder and it's just shared. And I can invite as many people as I want. Or
kick them out. Or remove myself from a folder someone shared with ME. Or shut
down the whole folder if I own it. Put something in Public and right click for
a link. Immediate, no questions asked, effortless workflow.

If I had to change anything I was already doing to use Dropbox, I wouldn't
have even given it a first thought, let alone a second thought, least of all
my $10. And in your example it is the "client" that makes it so easy for the
"customer" to get them to share files with you.

------
bradleyland
> _Once you begin using Dropbox, you become more and more indifferent to the
> hardware you are using, as well as the operating system on that device._
> Dropbox commoditizes your devices and their OS, by being your “state” system
> in the sky.

I strongly disagree with this. Dropbox is great, but it only affects a subset
of my experience on any given hardware/software platform. Dropbox cannot
change the aesthetic of Android in a way that would make me chose it over iOS.
Likewise for OS X and Windows. Dropbox cannot change a cheap, plastic Acer
laptop in to a unibody MacBook Air. If you care about these things, the
statement above is proven false for your use case.

"State" is plumbing; Dropbox is plumbing. It's damn good plumbing, but it's
plumbing none the less.

I think maybe the author is struggling with how to frame the disruption. I
know I am. To say that Dropbox is damn good plumbing is not an admonishment. I
don't want to live without damn good plumbing.

The best technology is transparent -- no, invisible. I use 1Password. I have
two laptops, an iPad, and an iPhone. I don't have to think about syncing
passwords between these devices. It "just happens". I don't see Dropbox
working in the background with 1Password to sync my passwords, but I know it's
responsible. Here's the rub:

 _Apple isn't the facilitator of this magic, and that is the disruption._

What do we call this though? It's not the OS. It's not the hardware. It's
something new. Some call it the "platform", but what is that? Everything is a
platform.

Apple created iCloud as a "platform". iCloud provides the plumbing for my
contacts, calendars, apps, music, etc. Everyone expects them to expand this to
include third-party services. Google has Gmail. Windows has (had) Live. The
trouble for Dropbox is that Apple/Google/Microsoft hold the keys to the user's
data. These three players have to individually agree to allow Dropbox in to
their ecosystem, and they all know that this act would commoditize their
platform. I think Dropbox is going to have a really tough time making inroads
there. I don't see any of these vendors making the "cloud platform"
interchangeable on their respective devices/OS.

~~~
frankydp
I believe you may have take the quoted out of context. I interpreted that
sentence to say that, Dropbox allows the state system to behave the same
regardless of the commodity used to interact with it. I do not believe the
discussion was about how you interact with the file but how you interact with
the storage of the file. I do think that that concept is not quite as
disruptive for the industry as is implied though.

Also, could you call the "magic" a harbor? Harbor's allow anything to dock and
trade regardless of their size, shape, or origin. Only half joking.

You are dead on about the barriers of entry though. There are goliath
industries out there that will defend there profits to the death, rather than
pivot or expand. Not so much the big 3 in my mind, but all of the supporting
companies and service providers.

~~~
bradleyland
I feel pretty confident that the context all supports the point he's making.
The lead in is about how wonderfully Dropbox has executed; and they have. Then
he states the core point twice linking terms like "indifferent" with
"hardware" and "operating system". The point is so central to the piece that
he underlined it. Then stated explicitly that it "commoditizes your devices
and OS". Then, in the last paragraph uses the term "cross-platform".

The author really does believe that "state" is where Dropbox is headed, but I
believe there are significant barriers there. Short of an anti-trust suit, I
don't see that barrier coming down, which is going to be a significant
impediment to Dropbox's ability to offer a "cross-platform" solution.

------
ChuckMcM
TL;DR version: Drop box disassociates state from the machine, this means you
don't care about the hardware and it can be commoditized. (more)

I suppose they weren't around for diskless workstations. But diskless
workstations weren't around for 3G and now 4G/LTE network access.

Its an interesting trend, but as anyone who has tried to use their android
phone to navigate when there is no network service, well they just can't. The
network may not really be the computer (old Sun joke) but you can make it
uncomfortably necessary.

You also put more of your productivity into the hands of the network provider,
and that is never good. Sure when the network is pervasive and can't be
monopolized by a single provider it will be a huge disruption, until then its
like walking by a sleeping lion carrying uncooked steak.

~~~
rabidsnail
Dropbox stores a local mirror of your account on every device connected to it.
If you lose network connectivity you just run off of your local mirror and
sync changes when you reconnect.

~~~
revelation
Thats certainly not how it works on mobile phones.

------
joeybaker
The elephant in the room is that this is exactly what Apple is doing with
iCloud and Google is moving toward with the fabled gDrive.

Dropbox is never going to have the integration that these two companies can
offer on their OS's.

Sure, I can get to my Dropbox files on my iPhone, and I can even use it to
sync in some programs, but it's not even close to the synchronization that
iCloud offers.

------
daenz
I liked Dropbox until it deleted my files. Then I dropped it instantly.

I was on Ubuntu, using their Dropbox client. I had some files that were
already synced, but that I wanted to exclude from being synced (they were huge
files, taking up precious space). I added an exclusion rule using their
client, and poof, not only were my files gone from Dropbox, they were gone
from my filesystem!

I liked Dropbox. I still do, but I won't use it. You can't make mistakes like
that and expect trust in return.

------
ph0rque
Here's my wishlist for Dropbox:

\- Have a per-folder P2P option (maybe buy AeroFS to achieve this?) I really
don't need an Amazon server to host my personal photos/videos, and they take
up a lot of space. But I would like them on each of my family's computers.

\- Increase quota continuously (like google does with gmail). They could do it
slowly enough that people would still be incentivized to do all the things the
do now to get more space.

------
6ren
So the theory is that this is the web-based OS, that Java and Netscape et al.
threatened MS with. The key isn't technical in itself (the cloud), but
marketing ( _whose_ cloud).

My own theory was that dropbox must be secretly headed towards a general cloud
solution to justify those valuations. But this story puts it into perspective:
dropbox is a competitor to MS and Apple.

------
Hackura
[..]Anyone that had used previous file synchronization programs, including
Apple’s own iDisk, constantly encountered state problems. Modifications in one
location would get out of synch with those in another, ruining the entire
premise of seamless synchronization. It wasn’t that these other companies did
not understand the problem, it was just that they could not execute on the
solution. The Dropbox team solved this, which was a critical innovation.[..]

Not true. They solved nothing, they copied existing solutions, and hide the
problems. If there is some conflicting file, the just rename them to
"$FILENAME (Conflict Copy from $MACHINE $DATE)" and then...do nothing!

I was really shocked when i discovered that my systems had hundreds of those
conflicts, and i did never became a message about them from dropbox.

------
apinstein
Dropbox is an awesome innovation, but IMHO it's a commodity. I don't see any
material network effects or major barriers to entry. In that way I think it's
very similar to Groupon and I think both will suffer at scale over the years.

Long bet anyone? ;)

------
padobson
I have to believe that Dropbox is the company that will ultimately solve the
television problem. A major problem with TV is that there does not exist a
solution to buy once and watch anywhere. When I am one day able to buy the
Walking Dead from the Dropbox market and play it from my Dropbox equipped TV,
phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and in the browser on devices I don't own, I
will gladly be shelling over what I currently pay for cable to Drew Houston
and Co.

~~~
devgutt
Drew, listen this guy...This would be a very welcomed pivot to TV. The only
reason that I still use USB sticks is my TV.

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donniezazen
To my surprise an increasing number of non-tech people are using dropbox,
those who I never would have imagined using something like dropbox.

The only reason keeping my away from premium subscription is that some other
companies offer far cheaper solution for offsite data backup.

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jebblue
I'd love to use it but I need 1 TB for $10. When that happens I'll be a
regular user.

~~~
ranit8
Google offers 1 TB, at $256 per year

    
    
      http://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage

------
revelation
Then why is Dropbox still a lame excuse of a remote backup system?

Seriously, if you think this is "a major disruption" (gosh, I hate that word),
give us the functionality and services to make up on that promise.

~~~
kenrikm
I guess it depends on how you use it. On my laptop I store 100% of my files in
the Dropbox folder not only does it make it so I always have everything that I
worked on while I was on the road it also protects me from loosing files if my
laptop were to get stolen. I can reinstall my operating system or switch to a
new laptop without any backing up etc..

~~~
FreakLegion
You could just use a service that works with your filesystem, like SugarSync.

