The way Dropbox has mismanaged Paper over the past decade, and squandered so many opportunities in the productivity tools space, has been one of the most frustrating things to watch.

Dropbox bought Hackpad and launched Dropbox Paper a decade ago!

Paper was awesome at launch — so much less friction than Google Docs for teams back then — and had a good internal product team behind it, but leadership failed to see the potential. I think it's because the Dropbox founders were so consumer-focused that they couldn't envision how huge Paper could be in the productivity tools space. They kept framing it as an Evernote competitor, instead of seeing it turning into something like Notion.

Even when they finally seemed to understand that Dropbox was never going to be a B2C sensation, they kept acquiring "side product" businesses instead of ones that built on Dropbox's existing value. (To their credit, this was the zeitgeist back when they started — B2B was not cool at all, and the sort of B2C/B hybrid that exists now wasn't a thing.)

Meanwhile startups like Notion actually saw the opportunity and blossomed. And nowadays, even super-slow Google is releasing features like pageless mode, markdown support, etc. Such that Paper is almost irrelevant at this point, despite having had such a massive head start.

It's sad because I can easily imagine an alternate future where Dropbox understood what Paper could be, and invested in it alongside things like an Airtable competitor, to create a truly viable, and forward-looking alternative to Google Docs/Sheets/Drive, without all the baggage of being a Microsoft Office clone.

"Thanks for subscribing to Dropbox Pro ianstormtaylor! Would you like to upgrade to Dropbox for Enterprise?"

"Thanks for sharing a file, ianstormtaylor, Dropbox for Business will do some bullshit"

Dropbox was a great product, but a shit company. They have a software platform and core technology that for B2B would readily displace high dollar stuff like managed file transfer and had a good early API that many apps took advantage of. I had a great experience working with them to capture shadow IT use of the product and get it in a managed environment.

But the relentless nagging, even of paying customers, is unserious and stupid. I wouldn't touch the product with a 10 foot pole.

Dropbox saw that the only B2C path for a company like them was to become Box, and they did not like it. Also, we kept criticizing Dropbox for moving away from a "folder that syncs".

I agree with a folder that syncs. Today I use dropbox, but I do my best to avoid interacting with it, because just clicking on the menubar icon makes me upset that no feature there is what I actually need. No sensible ignore rules, etc.

But I could have been wrong and focusing on dropbox was not the only path. But even if it wasn't, they fumbled every promising product they could. I mean, Mailbox, they pioneered (read acquired) the email swipe UX, then killed it.

Then there was that launch where they hyped some iCloud sync service that would allow apps to store settings and game states, etc. Whatever happened to that?

Today I'm so afraid that dropbox's more daring products will die faster than Google can retire theirs, that I simply do not use it for anything other than a folder than syncs where I can share links. And now that I think about it, it's been a while since I had to share a single link, so maybe I can just move to synching.

Yeah, Dropbox Paper remains the best pure writing experience I've ever used at work. I think Notion has a lot of nice features, but just writing in it still feels more cumbersome than Paper did a decade ago.

Stripe used to live and dir internally off of hackpad with some custom search engine attached to it. It was all binned after the Atlassianfication, but I don't think many devs saw the move away as positive.

In my experience Dropbox is actually really good at syncing data between devices.

It’s fast. It’s way more reliable than iCloud, and for “simply” keeping folders in sync just “simply” the best - for simple user requirements simplicity and reliability are key. Did I stress ‘simple’ enough? Maybe I should stress it Latin? Simplex veri sigillum.

I hope they stick to their core business.

Side note: Why do people like Notion? I just can't get into it. It feels like every time I type, some autocomplete thing pops up and stops my typing. I just went back to the good old Notes app.

Here is the thing: Dropbox has no business being anything other than a cloud storage solution. Stop trying to do everything, it's too difficult and too expensive. Find what you're great at, and just improve it little by little. Stop adding shit.

Never, ever used any additional Dropbox services. All I need it to do is be a reliable cloud storage. Nothing else.

> Paper was awesome at launch — so much less friction than Google Docs for teams back then

Except that you had to have everyone use a Dropbox account. So if you are already in bed with Google as a company, adding Dropbox for everyone might not be such a fun idea.

I loved the original hackpad. I used it for personal task management at a time when I was really struggling to keep on task at a job.

RIP Paper

The revenge of BrandonM...