Not to mention they basically resold a single AWS feature. All they had to do was rebuild S3 (and ec2).

Ah, you sound like this person: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.

Not only did BrandonM have a point in 2007, today it is even easier and much more advantageous to do file synchronization with Free Software tools. If you have multiple machines you have SSH on all of them already. There is no better solution out there than git together with ediff for versioning and conflict resolution. rsync and unison are great for syncing media files across many devices/USB drives/microSD cards with different filesystems on them. Hardlink or ZFS snapshots just work.

Dropbox is not even an option for me because there is no official support or reliable way to run it on OpenBSD.

Dropbox is a consumer product with limited features and use cases. Smugly dismissing the needs and technical capabilities of power users is not going to endear you to anyone here.

Then it’s good that my goal is not to endear myself to anyone here. Flippantly dismissing certain technologies and engaging in “just”isms needs to be called out because it’s not productive or helpful. Moreover, I think it’s funny that the same kinds of posts are being made in 2018 as were made in 2007 (i.e. “why don’t you just...”), considering they have nothing to do with Dropbox saving money by migrating away from AWS. Really, it’s not germane at all. Perhaps if the source were an article about open source alternatives to Dropbox.

> Flippantly dismissing certain technologies and engaging in “just”isms needs to be called out because it’s not productive or helpful.

I agree that hashkb's comment was flippant and unhelpful, but your reply was not any better and was the one that went off-topic.

That's all true, but you are not their customer here. Their customer is the person who has never heard half the words you just said - or at least the person who has to support a bunch of people who've never heard half the words you just said. :)

And he was totally right. Now it's even easier and mature open source tool and libraries are available. https://syncthing.net/ is good example

I think that's a little disingenuous. Dropbox provides:

1. a nice web interface;

2. synchronisation;

3. an easy-to-understand pricing model;

4. tightly integrated desktop support (at least for OS X).

There is not dishonor in that. The “magic” they provide is still better than the competition.

S3 and EC2 are by design commodity, low level artifacts. Like any other commodity, you should always be shopping around.

The big issue with Amazon has always been their “roach motel” philosophy where data goes in but doesn’t come out. (ie they hose you with network costs)

If you have enough scale and enough dollars, it is often cheaper to build bespoke infrastructure vs renting somebody else’s at margin.

From the perspective of a business, building your own data center only makes sense if it part of your business (like at Dropbox). Paying a margin for a service that is not part of your core model is per se not a bad thing, in most cases it makes a lot of sense. That is because if a company makes a huge investment, it makes this investment with its own capital. In theory (and that often applies to reality) a company can only invest money effectively in its core business.

This is why many companies with a lot of money still rent their offices – even if they intend to stay in the (often customized) buildings so they don't need flexibility. It just would not make sense to buy and to bind the capital in a building, it can be invested in their core business with higher returns.

An exception might be made in cases where a company has suddenly so much money that investing it all in its core business might diminish the capital/return rate, eg. through the US tax break, where a company shifts the money stored oversee back to the US. This is why for Google it might make sense to buy property, even though its not their business: They just have to much money.

Correct, but all of those are basically independent of the backend storage system. At one point you could almost consider Dropbox to be a VAR for S3 storage, with the emphasis on "Value Added."

Add that their flat rate pricing is actually a discount for moderately heavy users. If you use half or more of the 1 TB on the pro plan you’re already saving money compared to S3 pricing.[1] This is easy to do if you use something like Arq to back up your machines and take advantage of selective sync to archive rarely used files from old projects.

[1] S3 at 0.023/GB/month * 500 = $11.50

and 11.50 doesn't include traffic, which can get you even higher.

While S3 was the bulk of it, I wouldn't be surprised if they had used DynamoDB for metadata storage, SQS for job queuing (pushing share data down to clients asynchronously), SNS for broadcasting pub/sub, Redshift for data analysis, ASG for deployments, etc.

cost for both DynamoDB and Amazon Redshift can both get out of hands real quickly. I've seen it first hand. With Redshift, the problem is that data teams do not adjust the default configuration of 5 query slots. So when things slow down, instead of increasing concurrency for a given node, they add more nodes. I've seen monthly invoices of $100K+ for a workload that could have been done with less than a $2,000 / month.

metadata on mysql on bare metal last i checked. it wasn’t on ec2