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Dropbox Indeed Balked at Major Acquisition Offer from Apple

nexsta said:
Thank god Dropbox refused to get bought by Apple, the same thing would happen to Dropbox what happened to Siri, they would close it and probably use it as a next iPhone feature only.
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You really think that? It seems very clear to me what Apple would have done with Dropbox, they would have made it part of iCloud as they article makes clear.

But as I see it, iCloud doesn't really replace Dropbox as far as I understand it. They seem to be missing this Dropbox file system used for syncing which they had on MobileMe and DotMac.

I can certainly sync files with iCloud, but not by controlling a file system like one controls files on a OS X, but like one controls files on iOS. I do wish Apple had kept the OS X-file-system-like control for syncing as a part of iCloud, but it's hardly a large issue, as Dropbox is doing a wonderful job as is and iCloud is making syncing photos, documents, back ups, mail, contacts, calendars, reminders and bookmarks much more seamless then Dropbox would, but I like the extra control Dropbox allows me. I can't see any reason not to use both!
 
What IP does DropBox own?
None?

So what is stopping Apple from implementing their own "drop box"?
Nothing?

They should have taken the money and ran.
Look at what happened with Groupon.
They turned down 1 billion offer from Google.
Google probably spent under a million to copy their service while Groupon tanks.

DropBox is NOTHING from a technology perspective.
They have ZERO IP protection.
If DropBox thinks they have the next big thing they are kidding themselves.
 
ptysell said:
What IP does DropBox own?
None?

So what is stopping Apple from implementing their own "drop box"?
Nothing?

They should have taken the money and ran.
Look at what happened with Groupon.
They turned down 1 billion offer from Google.
Google probably spent under a million to copy their service while Groupon tanks.

DropBox is NOTHING from a technology perspective.
They have ZERO IP protection.
If DropBox thinks they have the next big thing they are kidding themselves.
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why do people keep referring to them as wanting to be the next big thing? What makes you believe they want to be that? What makes you think what their business plan is at this point isn't working?

Obviously they are doing just fine to turn down 800 million. Obviously they didn't want to sell out.

Dropbox has the market right now, and they are doing just fine.

Stop with the next big thing already, that isn't what they are about. They have worked hard to get where they are at.
 
What's the matter with some people? Can't you understand that dropbox are successful because they support multiplatform and a file structure? They are not going to vanish overnight because of iCloud. People seem to forget that the majority of people still use PC's and there are other phones and tablets out there besides Apple's. Apple's got the best hardware and arguably the best software, but most people simply can't afford it, unless on contracts. This is no diss on Apple, but a strong support for the decision Houston made in regards to Steve's offer.
 
Props to Dropbox, I would prefer they stay as themselves rather than be bought by a billion dollar corporation. Just look at what Google did to YouTube.

why should you be interested in dropbox after iCloud release?
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Why should I be interested in iCloud after using Dropbox for 2 years?
 
If Steve Jobs had come to me, told me my product wasn't a product at all, but really a feature, I would politely decline, go home and drink heavily, and then when he came back, try to negotiate the price upwards. Not enough to be greedy or insulting, but enough to keep my head up high like I didn't get robbed.

Steve Jobs said to them in one sentence, somewhat obscured, that Apple was coming after them to make them obsolete. Dropbox could either be the ones powering Apple's new solution, or be steamrolled by it. Your service is a feature says we're adding your service as a feature in our products, making a more integrated and easier to use product. All your potential customers won't even hear about you, because they'll all be using ours by default.

These guys failed Negotiation 101, because they overestimated the strength of their hand. They may and probably do honestly believe Dropbox is a product in its own right, and a superior one to anything Apple may have in the future. But the reality is, theirs is not a new story. Apple came and talked to music player companies back in the day, and now we have iTunes and... does anybody use anything other than iTunes?

We'll certainly see how things turn out, but iCloud is here to stay, and offers the sort of multifaceted and integrated solution that ultimately Dropbox can't compete with. I don't think Dropbox will disappear, certainly not overnight. For now at least they do things iCloud can't, but given enough time, Dropbox is definitely on the decline.
 
all it takes is for some icloud enabled file synching app and dropbox will slowly decline.

Dropbox missed this opportunity. :D
 
ViperDesign said:
why do people keep referring to them as wanting to be the next big thing? What makes you believe they want to be that? What makes you think what their business plan is at this point isn't working?

Obviously they are doing just fine to turn down 800 million. Obviously they didn't want to sell out.

Dropbox has the market right now, and they are doing just fine.

Stop with the next big thing already, that isn't what they are about. They have worked hard to get where they are at.
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What are you talking about?

They have ZERO IP to prevent competition.
They offer NOTHING unique.
They offer NOTHING a competitor with more resources (see Apple/Google) couldn't do faster/cheaper/better.

Their company offers little to no value.

They are the next Groupon.

DropBox got their 4 billion valuation. Their insiders will sell out and the company will stagnate just like every other web 2.0 companies (outside of a handful). They don't have 4 billion in IP or physical assets.

Apple integrates DropBox like services (for the same cost/free) into iCloud and they are done and there is nothing they can do about it.

If they had patents that might actually make the company worth something but they don't.
I would cost under a million (easily) for Apple to replicate DropBox from scratch. Even less when the technology left over from MobileMe.

Frankly once they bring iCloud documents to the desktop version of iWork and Microsoft integrates iCloud into office, DropBox becomes even more irrelevant as time goes on.
 
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samcraig said:
I've written why in this thread. And so have others. Maybe I should assume you're just too lazy to read the whole thread and/or you, as I originally suggested, just don't get it.
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samcraig, all I have seen is you and others from your group think engage in personal attacks. I have tried Dropbox. I have tried Live Mesh and I used to have an x drive (sp?) account years ago. I just don't see the point of it.

Listen, I actually "work" for a living as a software developer on windows. Got it? I have no interest in complicated solutions and I don't see any advantages over using box.net, dropbox or sugar sync.

I don't have any interest in owning an android phone and I have no interest in using windows as my main platform because that would seem too much like "work" to me.

I understand how the client server model works and various strategies you can use for distributed systems with caching and syncing.

I'm not interesting in platitudes, rhetoric or shill statements in favour of Dropbox or other parties. What I want you do explain to me and other skeptics is why we should bother running other background services on our computers for a bunch of third party services that do not talk to each other instead of using iCloud. What is the benefit for someone who has no interest in android?

You can have whatever hobbies you like but people like me have other kinds of hobbies like photography, singing, playing musical instruments. Basically, anything that is different from what we do for "work" is what I like to do for "fun".
 
sideburn said:
LOL. Seriously? What's stopping it? Plenty of people are using iTunes on their PCs...
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What's stopping it? Nothing really, other than Apple. Are we going to see iCloud on Android? Windows Phone? Linux? Doubt it. So it's not cross-platform in the way Dropox is.
 
Well, I just found out iCloud won't work on my 2006 Dual-core Macbook Pro. Lion is needed. Not to mention my old, but fast G5 Tower.
I Needed a working cloud service to sync my files. Dropbox came through. Their Free 2GB space is more than enough for me.
 
Is Dropbox really just the name for a feature?

A feature, that can only be a small part of a larger service or product?

If Steve Jobs is right, then Dropbox could drop on the wayside (just as cheapskate service Groupon, which declined a Google offer).

If not, and if Dropbox and iCloud go after different segments of the market, it may survive.

But, honestly, that's what you usually see in the developing tech world: a new service comes out, grows, and is then acquired by a large company.

On the other hand: YouSendIt could exist independently, so why not Dropbox.
 
I've set up pmwiki on my home machine with one of the folder in Dropbox as the place where the files are kept.

I've also enabled pmwiki on my work machine (again, pointing to the same folder in Dropbox).

The result? Versioned and synced data store for a php/text file-based wiki system.

Dhelsdon said:
What's everyone using DropBox for aside from the obvious file storage solution.
Currently I use DropBox with PkgBackup for my jailbroken devices, but aside from that I don't use it that much. By the sounds of it I am blind to many of it's other uses, please enlighten me!
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http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/dropbox-confirms-250-million-investment/

Dropbox, the online storage company, confirmed on Tuesday that it had raised $250 million in its latest fund-raising round, an investment that values the company at $4 billion, according to people close to the company.

The round was led by venture capital firm Index Ventures and featured several new investors, including Goldman Sachs, Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, RIT Capital Partners and Valiant Capital Partners. Two previous venture capital investors, Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners, also participated.
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In the last six months, the company’s customer base has roughly doubled to more than 45 million users.
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I was hoping iCloud would replace Dropbox for me but so far its just not reliable enough. Half the time it won't upload my documents at all and then even when it does sometimes the files are corrupted and can't be downloaded. I much prefer just moving the document into the dropbox folder, it works for now. Is there anyway to track iCloud, to see if its syncing? :confused:
 
I use all three products iDisk, box.net and dropbox. Hands down dropbox works best when it comes to syncing. I bet they have some secret sauce that Apple want's or needs that would make iCloud better quicker.
 
I doubt why Apple / Google / M$ cannot release something "as simple as Dropbox" (as many members in this thread pointed out), there must be some IP issues that the Dropbox CEO didn't disclose, otherwise Apple wouldn't have approached Dropbox and gave that generous offer.
 
So many points to make. First, for all of you how keep saying $800m is SOOOO much money you would have taken it and ran, you have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe $800m is a lot of money based on your life and your income, but we do not know the company investment, what the VC`s are owed, the buyout, the debt, and most important the current income of the company. So if you look at the total VALUE of the company, $800, could be too LOW!!! Also, the people that invested and built DropBox believe in it, maybe they have a long term plan, and the short term cash out is not part of it. VC investors look for a quick exit high return, so if they said NO, then it was not A LOT OF MONEY!!! Trust me, Houston did not make the decision, he made it with the VC in his ear and I can assure you there was a magic number that would have made them sell.

As for DropBox being a feature or a file system, well, it IS a feature, if used right, it is a feature of the OS and file system or not, you do not really need to care. With the use of symlinks and backup software, etc. for me, I save docs, or back up apps or whatever and they just save to the cloud, I do not think about it, stuff just goes to and from DropBox where ever I am, whatever I am using. Sure, the initial planning and set up you need to consider DropBox a software feature and a file system, after that, it is all cloud.

To the person saying they did not want to give up control by using the cloud, you do not get it. The cloud and companies like DropBox do not take your control away, the extend your control to anywhere in the world, on any device on any OS, that is the ULTIMATE in control.

To the person who thinks Amazon cloud is like DropBox, NOT EVEN CLOSE, try both and you will see. Amazon cloud is okay for music and stuff, but no tools for syncing, cannot handle packaged files or bundled files and more makes it far short of DropBox.

And anyone who thinks iCloud is a DropBox does not get either service, they are so far different that it is easier to say what they do the same
 
marc11 said:
but we do not know the company investment, what the VC`s are owed, the buyout, the debt, and most important the current income of the company.
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According to the article, revenue in 2011 will be $240 million.
 
geerlingguy said:
Apple's vision is a 'fileless' solution, where you simply trust that all your data is 'there' somewhere.
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Well, I a) don't share this vision and b) there are certain files on my harddisk I wouldn't want to share with ANY (unencrypted) cloud thing.

Btw with DropBox I can transparently encrypt my DropBox disk. That is even described in the DropBox FAQ - nice!
 
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