[mjevans]

I'm guessing they can't go that route because youtube (google), and twitch (amazon) are the only 600lbs gorillas that can do /something/ to stave off the insane 100lbs gorilla that goes for the jugular (MPAA/RIAA and the like).

Photo-gallery, as you've noted opens them to competing with other such providers... who all seem to eventually race towards throwing ads on everything to try and make some profit.

Freely accessible areas also equate to more consumers (not users), and I don't know if DB's business model charges any kind of fee for access to that data.

This mostly sounds like DB is out of areas they want to / feel they can succeed in tapping for new customers and thus they attempt to cut back on costs with the hope of inertia retaining the existing users.

[toomuchtodo]

> This mostly sounds like DB is out of areas they want to / feel they can succeed in tapping for new customers and thus they attempt to cut back on costs with the hope of inertia retaining the existing users.

I'm okay with how Dropbox as-is as a Pro user, and have no problem giving them $100/year in perpetuity.

A product must not constantly evolve/improve for it to succeed (I'm looking at you Github with your damn dark bar at the top nav now!). "Good enough" can carry the day. Sync always works. My files are always there. That's what I'm paying for.

[bigiain]

I was pretty happy with paying for Dropbox as-was. Turns out they've now broken a bunch of image links in forum posts and websites I've shared using Dropbox since I joined in 2010 (and became a paying customer later). I will not be renewing my subscription - largely because of this change.

Part of my attention since they announced this change late last year has been taken up asking myself "which of those shared photos do I care enough about to go back to the relevant forum/website and update the link - if that's even possible?" And the realisation slowly grew - I probably don't _really_ care enough about broken links to images - especially on sites I not longer actively use - which raises the obvious question, why am I paying Dropbox at all then?

Sure - their product might need to "evolve" but if I'm paying for a pterodactyl and they've pivoted to small warm blooded mammals, they may well out compete all their dinosaur competitors, but I'm one of the customers who'll say "Sorry, I didn't ask for a mammal, where's my pterodactyl that I've been paying you for?"

[TeMPOraL]

> A product must not constantly evolve/improve for it to succeed

Unfortunately, it goes against the startup ethos. That's why I avoid using startup products whenever I can. With regular companies, the problem is less pronounced, though it exists nonetheless.

It's sad people have to keep fucking up things they first made work, only because they're looking for more profit.

[manigandham]

Dropbox isn't a startup. It stopped being that a long time ago.

[TeMPOraL]

Did they pay off their VC obligations? If no, then I'm going to play the "if it walks like a duck..." card.

That said, my point was more general than just this Dropbox issue.

[tw04]

Right, but their problem is - at SOME point, google or Microsoft will figure it out. MS in particular will destroy them if they do get their syncing and sharing down. I'm in your same boat but I also have free onedrive through work. The second they get their sharing figured out (and quite frankly they may have already but I haven't put it through the ringer again) - dropbox is in trouble.

[rodgerd]

OneDrive isn't quite as good as Dropbox, but it's good enough for my use cases - and it costs as much for a five-user family license that includes Office as it does for one Dropbox account.

I ran both in parallel for nearly a year. I've cancelled Dropbox.