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.

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xp84 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> only B2C path for a company like them was to become Box

What does this mean? I used Box once in about 2011 at work (before Google and MS got serious with their "Drive" features my company had paid for Box) and my impression was actually "this is like if Dropbox were built by Oracle" -- worse than Dropbox in every way, both usability and performance, but with some corporate-tailored features. As a consumer, I would never have dreamed of switching to Box.

So that's why I'm curious what you mean by the comment with respect to B2C.

	▲	figassis 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I mean exactly what you experienced. They did not go the enterprise way bc they did not want to become Box. They didn't think they could provide a good UX if they focused on enterprise.

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guelo 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

They're not even a "folder that syncs" anymore, at least on android if you make a folder "available offline" (which should be the default to begin with) it stores it internally to the dropbox app where it can't be accessed by other apps. There is another button "Save to device", but that's just a one-time snapshot of the file that won't stay in sync. I deleted my account after they pulled that enshitification.

	▲	f33d5173 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		I am fairly certain that this was forced on them by google rather than a deliberate choice. Syncthing and other apps were put in the same position.