Dropbox Founder Wants To Build the Next Google

ColdWetDog writes "The Dropbox file storage and synchronization service has managed to attract 50 million users and $250 million in venture capital. The founder of Dropbox, Drew Houston, says he is determined to build the next Google or Apple, not to sell out to them. Even for a guy whose paper valuation is around $600 million, it seems like the best he could hope for is another Facebook-level company — file storage isn't that sexy. I wish him luck in his bid to remain independent. I'd rather see Dropbox remain fairly agnostic with regard to other Internet services."

Comments

Tough sell

[bonch]

Dropbox has figured out an elegant solution to a vexing problem. With the explosion of smartphones and tablets, people have more devices and more apps than ever before. How can they get access to the latest version of all their stuff — photos, music, videos, documents, spreadsheets — no matter what device they are using and no matter where they are?

Apple addressed this with the free iCloud, Google of course has its own cloud storage services, and even Microsoft has the free SkyDrive, so I'm confused as to why the article considers this a vexing problem waiting to be solved when it was pretty much the theme of 2011 for all the major platform vendors. Lots of venture capital doesn't mean something is going to take off--the lesson last year was the Color app, which got $41 million of first-round funding in March only to immediately flop on release months later.

Re:Tough sell

[tidepool]

They are all, somewhat, 'tied' to a company and a product line. Sure, many things are cross platform, but I'm sure to get complete smooth functionality, you should be using the respective product line.

A 3rd party that could make *everything* sync up, without any snafu's, and offer a solid consistent UI on any device, would easily be the best solution.

Storage and, more important, remote access, is at the tip of the ice-burg at the moment. I can't imagine where it will go from here, but it'll move and fast.

Re:Tough sell

[ColdWetDog]

It is true that they are tied their individual platforms, but that could also be considered their primary advantage over DropBox. Everyone who buys an iPad automatically benefits from iCloud integration, for example.

I don't want it tied to Apple's limited world view of what is good or bad. I don't want it tied to Microsoft's bizarre implementations. I don't want it tied to Google's manifold desire to sick advertisers on me.

I just want it to work. On OS X at home. On Windows at work. On Linux, BeOS, CP/M (well, I give that a pass) or whatever. The vendors all have an agenda which, so far, hasn't jibed well with mine.

Re:Tough sell

[Solandri]

Dropbox just resells Amazon's S3 storage service. They have a slicker interface, but the heavy lifting is all done by Amazon.

Re:Tough sell

[icebike]

You can't escape an agenda, but a company could be run that sold services directly to customers, with a contract forbidding advertising / any sale of personal data. Their agenda could be to make money by selling you a service and not selling you out.

Actually if the idea is to make money directly from its users, that's fine and dandy. Beyond that, any plans to sell my data or even the fact that that I have data is out of the box a non-starter for me.

The fact that Drop Box can break the encryption any time they want/need is pretty much a non-starter as far as I am concerned. The fact that they lied about it initially is another black mark. At least Google tells you right up front exactly what they can and will do with the content of your email.

SpiderOak promotes zero knowledge storage. They have no way to break the encryption and couldn't do so in response to a subpoena if they wanted to. Windows, Mac, Android, Linux. And their fees are half of what Drop Box wants. In addition it can keep iterations of your data if you wish, so you can roll back those changes in your spread sheet one by one.

I just don't see what Drop Box has to offer in regard the topic of this post, Without breaking its basic promise to keep your data private, they have nothing to sell other than space. You won't get to be of Apple's size or Google's omnipresence just supplying disk space that can be had by government agencies without even going for a warrant.

If they want to convince me, change their system to a zero knowledge system in which they can't hand over the keys to anyone because they don't have them. They need to pick up the tab from the mobile carriers for data syncing mobile devices. Trying to build a cloud storage empire that gets shared with police is not likely to be all that successful in the age of data caps.

Re:Tough sell

[Kalriath]

Are you referring to WinZip in general, or your own specific evaluation copy?

Re:Tough sell

[TheRaven64]

In the '90s, every Windows user installed WinZIP (a few even paid for it!). Everyone distributed zip files and WinZIP was the tool for opening and creating them. It wasn't a sexy market, but it was a solution to a problem that a lot of people had, and it was the tool that everyone used (except warez d00dz, who preferred rar). The, Windows came with the ability to explore zip files as if they were normal folders. The need for WinZIP dropped from almost everyone to practically no one overnight. The same thing happened on the Mac with StuffIt - OS X can natively open a variety of archive formats, so there is no need for a third-party tool.

Fast forward a decade, and DropBox is in the same position in the cloud storage market that WinZIP occupied in its own market. Everyone who needs to share a couple of files with a friend or colleague uses it. But now operating systems and other services are coming with some cloud storage, so there's less need for a third-party service.