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> It's unfortunate the original demo video was lost to time. I remember how astounding it was.

Is this the video you're thinking of?

https://web.archive.org/web/20070407145348/http://www.getdro...

> What I miss is being able to right click on an item, click "copy public URL", paste it into the browser, and get an exact copy of that item (with nothing else; no image overlays, no ads, nothing).

That still works for me, when replacing dl=0 with dl=1 at the end of the URL (dl = download).

pcloud with the public folder works well. I've uploaded a few html ebooks with relative routing and it has worked fine.

> right click on an item, click "copy public URL", paste it into the browser, and get an exact copy of that item

You have described Google Drive.

Point 3 was not "'viral' or income generating" and DBX pioneered one of the most viral campaigns (give-get) and generates almost $1B a year in free cash flows? How is that vindication?

They were seemingly everywhere and lots of apps and services offered Dropbox as an option. 200 million users in 2013.

Then they crippled the free plan and Apple and MS started pushing their services hard. And Dropbox seemed less ubiquitous after that.

Daniel Gackle thinks BrandonM's is most probably the most misunderstood comment in news.yc history.

from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27067281

  Other users have provided the link, but my heart sinks a little every time I see this brought up, especially when the commenter is singled out by name. People forget that this is a real person. He also happens to be a great HN contributor, and has been for many years.

  I realize it's internet fun to point neon arrows at people seeming outrageously wrong in the past, but the truth is that people aren't reading that comment accurately and there's a huge dose of hindsight fallacy here.

  When BrandonM wrote "I have a few qualms with this app", he didn't mean the software. He meant their YC application. (Note the title of Drew's post: "My YC App"). He wasn't being a petty nitpicker—he was earnestly trying to help, and you can see in how sweetly he replied to Drew there that he genuinely wanted them to succeed. We should be so lucky for all responses to "crazy new ideas" to be that decent. This community would be healthier, and actually the current thread is a standout example of how far from true it is.

  The criticisms he was raising turned out to be a non-issue in hindsight, but were on point in 2007, when the idea of file synchronization was widely derided as a solution-in-search-of-a-problem which only technical users would ever care about, users who (as the comment pointed out) could already roll their own solutions. The idea had recently been publicly mocked in a famous blog post*, so it was on people's minds as the prime example of an idea only technical users would ever care about—and even YC funded Dropbox because they believed in Drew, not the idea.

  * described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275