Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hannes0 978 days ago
This discussion reminds me of when Dropbox was at ShowHN and someone was commenting on how this could be done with FTP.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
3 comments
antonjs 977 days ago
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.[1]

[1] https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026

link
scott_w 978 days ago
To be fair, the person asking the question genuinely is interested in the answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37858345
link
eastbound 978 days ago
I still haven’t purchased Dropbox. When the choice came up, it seemed important for our backups not to be made in USA.

So, indeed, a very cool replacement was SSH.

I still don’t know anyone who didn’t leave Dropbox after they jacked up the prices. A USB key is much cheaper (and reliable, at the rate at which Dropbox nukes accounts that they deem not compliant with whatever policy).

link
solardev 978 days ago
Most people I know just went with their cloud provider's sync solution once everyone added one (GDrive, iCloud, Amazon photos, OneDrive, Creative Cloud, etc.)

Can't remember the last time I saw a USB key in use anymore.

The cloud stuff is convenient, but it quickly became a commoditu Dropbox is still better in some small ways (like delta syncs) but it wasn't enough I guess.

link
mikeyouse 978 days ago
It's amusing to see "but it wasn't enough I guess" in relation to a profitable $10 billion company with 3,000 employees. That's a pretty good outcome!
link
eastbound 978 days ago
Well, it’s relevant: Atlassian launched a paid issue tracker in 2003 when the open-source Mantis was all the rage.

There is always room for a smooth paid service compared to the rough free one. Android and Linux vs twice-more-expensive Apple.

link
solardev 978 days ago
True! It's still a useful product, but the pressure to keep getting huge-r is always there I guess. I knew someone who worked there and they seemed pretty desperate for new initiatives (like the failed Paper). Most of their competitors have online storage as part of their product portfolio. I don't know of anything else major that Dropbox does...
link
ajkjk 978 days ago
> I still don’t know anyone who didn’t leave Dropbox after they jacked up the prices.

Funny, I don't know anyone who did.

link