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Posted by satis
Jun 13, 2019 at 10:19 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
>The new version of Dropbox (the enhanced desktop app, the upgraded iOS
>app) is an intriguing option…
>
>I’m still hoping Apple will acquire Dropbox.
Highly unlikely. These moves by Dropbox are part of a long, slow strategy they’re making to focus away from consumers and focus on enterprise customers, and to integrate with other enterprise solutions (eg Slack, Zoom, Atlassian).
https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/dropbox-search/ “Dropbox relaunches as an enterprise collaboration workspace”
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jun 14, 2019 at 07:46 AM
Oh dear, and the criticism (of Dropbox) has been considerable. Apparently the new client takes up significant resources (I hadn’t noticed on my MacBook Pro, as such, but now I’m going to monitor it). And prices have gone up. Some interesting press/user reactions summarised here:
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/06/13/meet-the-new-dropbox/
It’s a shame Dropbox feel they have to “focus” on enterprise rather than continue to be everybody’s go-to file syncing solution. But hey, American entrepreneurship…
I would recommend Autotask (The File Syncing Service Formerly Known As Soonr) as the obvious business alternative, but they appear to be messing about with various possible strategies and I’m not quite sure where it will all end up - I think Soonr has just been taken over (again) by Datto, following the Autotask takeover. But the service is running nicely, and they have European servers (in Norway), so we’re still happy with them.
However, I am taking a slightly more serious look at iCloud as a possible alternative, now that Apple appear to be making efforts to improve it (native Windows client, shared folders).
Posted by satis
Jun 14, 2019 at 04:30 PM
MadaboutDana wrote:
>It’s a shame Dropbox feel they have to “focus” on enterprise rather than
>continue to be everybody’s go-to file syncing solution. But hey,
>American entrepreneurship…
More like: but hey…a corporate survival.
They haven’t made a profit in years ... if they ever have. In 2015 the ran a net loss of $326 million, in 2016 a net loss of $210 million, in 2017 a net loss of $118 million, and last year they had a particularly bad net loss of $485 million. Being a generalist cloud provider wasn’t working, and trying to scrounge subscriptions from notoriously tightfisted consumers has never worked, and got less plausible as competition has intensified.
If anything Dropbox was too slow to pivot to the enterprise sector. Box.com saw that writing on the wall and pivoted around five years ago.