Dropbox Finally Brings Its Google Docs Competitor Out of Beta (theverge.com)

Dropbox today made Paper -- its note-taking app that it's emphasizing is a tool that's built for managing workflow as well -- global. In addition to the launch of Paper, the company said that users will also be able to automatically generate presentations in Keynote and other applications through the app. From a report: Dropbox's software is similar to Google's suite of workplace cloud apps. Paper -- itself a minimal document editor and writing tool like Google Docs -- is the focal point, while all of Dropbox's other services and features now plug into and augment the experience. Paper is Dropbox's latest attempt to court businesses away from Microsoft and Google, or at the very least to encourage companies to pay for Dropbox services on top of what they already use institutionally. It's part of Dropbox's ongoing shift away from consumer storage and apps and toward enterprise software that is both more lucrative and self-sustaining. The company shut down its Mailbox email app and Carousel photo storage service back in 2015. In place of its consumer focus, Dropbox has been pouring more resources into Paper and other projects that make its mobile apps and website a place to perform work, instead of a barebones destination for files.

Comments

Re:Can such a name even be trademarked?

[Luthair]

IANAL but with words (Word, Windows, Publisher, Works, Sky, Metro, etc. ) you can apply for a trademark for a narrow market, with made-up words (like Xerox) you can get a broad trademark.

You... you're still a company?

[ckatko]

DropBox is still a thing? Their pricing is insane AND as we've established, their tool chain is years behind.

20 GB for a $1/month? Google offers 100 GB for $2/month (even less if you pay yearly!).

Re:You... you're still a company?

[swb]

I use Dropbox because it works well, is priced reasonably for a 1 TB of storage and it has near ubiquitous support.

That being said, it does follow symlinks, but AFAIK it doesn't automagically update symlinked folders without pausing and unpausing the client to force a re-scan.

And in a lot of ways, the use of symlinks wouldn't be necessary if they would allow you to add more than one top-level sync folder (the "dropbox" folder). Symlinks are just a (useful) kludge to not be forced to break your own existing folder hierarchy to sync with Dropbox.

I'd like to see more features along the lines of security/encryption, but I also can see where that might be hard. If I have something sensitive I want to store there, I encrypt it myself.

You... don't use Dropbox??

[SuperKendall]

20 GB for a $1/month?

For a service that works incredibly well? And one that I know will not just get dropped when Google grows bored?

Yes.

Google Drive is the same price for 1TB as Dropbox ($9.99) and Dropbox is even cheaper if you buy a year in advance.

Not a Google Docs Competitor

[Rataerix]

Paper would be more of a note taking application similar to onenote or evernote. I would not call this a Google Docs competitor.