[alain94040]

Even Twitter wouldn't sound ambitious if you say "we are group SMS for the world".

To better understand how ambitious a startup is, assume that its adoption is 100%. If everyone is using it, does it change lives? If everyone chats on Twitter, does it impact politics? If everyone is on Facebook, do you reconnect with old friends? Etc. Dropbox is in that category too.

With used cars purchases, I can see how everyone would use the site, and still not have any meaningful impact. Cheaper cars. More efficient market. But still, in the end, cheaper cars. Am I missing something?

[Estragon]

What is the best-case endgame for dropbox? I like it, but I don't understand why everyone's so excited about its potential.

[azylman]

I think this is the best illustration I've seen of what makes Dropbox so great: http://xkcd.com/949/

[Detrus]

If you miss you just need to make an account and install the..

Dropbox should be a feature of the OS. Otherwise it can only get one part of the UX right, drag and drop.

[tesseractive]

That's fine when everyone everywhere uses the same OS or all OSs automatically connect to the same back end. But if I want to share files between a Windows box, an iPad, and an Android phone, it's unlikely that anything useful for my purposes will be built into the OS anytime soon.

And even if I insist on buying nothing but Apple (or whatever) products, if I want to share files with my dad or my next door neighbor, now I have to worry about what OS they're running too.

You install Dropbox once per device. After that, it's trivially easy.

[Detrus]

OS independent iCloud is a nice feature but hard to see the path to Apple sized scale from it. It's just one of fifty UX headaches of typical computer use. Easier to get at those from OS or browser positions, Dropbox is in a weird spot.

[tesseractive]

So maybe their next move is to buy Evernote, or build their own. As someone already mentioned, build a suite of document viewers/editors that go hand in hand with managing the files. Go from just allowing you to post a public folder to becoming your personal web presence. Manage cross-social-network personal information so that it always stays in sync.

There are a lot of possibilities if you think past the files.

[vecter]

They can become the file system for the internet. If they're successful, many futures apps (mobile or desktop) will sit on top of Dropbox software to sync files and app state for their users. That is an incredibly powerful vision.

[oblique63]

> If they're successful, many futures apps (mobile or desktop) will sit on top of Dropbox

This sounds like a great vision for Dropbox to follow, but I just can't shake the feeling that the future is going to ultimately look a lot more like what Google is doing with docs, and eliminate the need for most offline/native apps at all. And if in the best case, Dropbox is still going to be dependent on offline apps, I guess it just feels a bit limiting.

I'll admit as much as the next person that the current wave of web/browser-based things (games, operating systems, phone apps, etc) feel seriously lacking, but given enough time, I just can't imagine how this isn't the direction the future is heading. Dropbox makes it amazingly easy to backup, version, and share files right now, but if all the apps you use would already be doing that for you, what would be the point? Or rather, how would Dropbox pivot to account for this?

I think Dropbox is awesome, and that vision you're describing is great, but I would imagine that there is a very specific window of opportunity for when they would have to take action if they want to see this type of 'endgame' have any real impact.

[dreamdu5t]

Why can't the end-game be a profitable backup/storage company? I don't get it.

[Estragon]

Fine by me, but I believe people involved with it value it at well over $200 million, which suggests a grander plan.

[mixmax]

What if you could edit all your files in dropbox' html interface? What if it was easy to do, and kept the simplicity they've become known for?

Then your OS would be a commodity, and Dropbox would be what provided the value. Seamless editing of documents across devices, no matter where you are or what sort of device you're working on.

That's a pretty good endgame for dropbox.

[Detrus]

That's Google Documents + web photoshop etc. Most of the value will be in the quality of the editing UI, Google Documents vs DropBox documents.

Google Docs already turns your local filesystem into a "commodity." And what if Dropbox becomes Google Docs, that's not google/Apple sized. Then what?

The path to scale for Dropbox seems quite tricky.

[r00fus]

Ubiquity. Once dropbox becomes essential for a large number of mobile or web-based apps (and their users), it becomes indispensable. With this comes a lot of possibility for monetizing either from the users or the vendors.

Of course one could say that's the same goal for just about any consumer-facing startup these days.

[eru]

Amazon was only new books in the beginning. Once you get a market started, you can add other products. But for used cars my imagination is only good enough to see another ebay as it's extension.