And if I were Dropbox, I'd worry like hell. Google isn't depending on making GDrive profitable from fees, so they can literally give it away.
However: File sync strikes me as a lot closer to email than <insert failed acquisition here>.
Additionally, it seems logical to build/ship GDrive right into android.
I say again: I'd worry like hell.
You're second point sounds right. But to me, Dropbox has always been about the UX and convenience rather than the cost / space.
I think it will be interesting to see what Google launches.
[1] See this slide for CEO Drew Houston's humorous take on this: http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lesson...
Does GDrive do that? Not yet.
Yes, especially in a market where there are many, many users of computers who might have occasion to share files who have not used (or even heard of) any of the available file-sharing solutions yet. I am a sporadic user of Dropbox strictly for back-up of documents I produce, and a moderately frequent user of Google Docs for collaborative editing who knows a lot of other Google Docs users. I could see Google making huge gains in market share, turning it into tomorrow's "first mover" from the point of view of most users, for a file-sharing service.
Then I started using it for sharing. Man, it's magic - I've never had it be so painless to share things. I can put a folder in my dropbox, share it to a few emails, and then everyone just has it later in the day. Man, that's cool. I can also create unlimited of those folders easily to control who gets what documents/files. It's a bloody miracle, Dropbox is. The backup feature is really second fiddle to sharing, it's just to make it useful enough for you to try it before you need to share, so that you discover sharing and fall in love with the product.
They have specific brand momentum (where Google's momentum is not specific to the product) which counts for a lot when dealing with the general public.
I wouldn't worry like hell. Though I would worry a healthy amount: I'd keeping a very close eye on how this pans out, and would re-double efforts to make sure I didn't fall behind on product development, quality and support.
You can add Google Navigation and Google Voice to the list of successful products that match that description.
I think GDrive will help DropBox more by offloading their freeriders to Google. People seeking a better premium experience (and less risk of say losing all their GDrive contents because their Google+ got suspended) will likely find DropBox appealing once they realize the convenience of a service like this.
It would be pretty tough to compete with an over 10,000 engineer company with incredible building blocks on features.
The design of the Google organization rewards micro-optimizations (use data for every decision, or else your ass isn't covered) and risk-aversion (set low KPI's and game them to get the biggest bonus each quarter).
By contrast, the design of the innovation space in general rewards peak-jumping, risk-taking, and a healthy blend of intuition and data. And it already selected Dropbox.
Don't get me wrong, the (layers and layers of) leadership at Google want to make killer products. But at the level of the lowly implementer, not only is making killer products only a peripheral concern, but those who can and want to make killer products tend to self-select out of Google.
"Netscape Navigator was not free to the general public until January 1998"
Edit: FYI, Mosaic was the one I had in mind, which was free.
Putting aside the snarky remark about IE's apparent target audience, there are any number of contemporary sources which give examples of how your intended statement is factually incorrect.
For example: http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/v-e.pdf
There is plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree, but my conversion circa IE4 was not an outlying datapoint.
I have still to find anyone who actually used any of the IEs that MS released for Unix.
I think they were doing "free for noncommercial uses" license because most of the people I knew then I wouldn't consider a software pirate.
Do you think fear of a Google black swan is enough of a selling point for dropbox to survive?
Simplicity and transparency (from where I'm standing) seem like the things that helped Dropbox proliferate - no fuss, just a directory that syncs, but it also means they have no way to monetize their service (they haven't made a dime from me yet) and they provide no added value.
Now, consider my case. I don't even have to remove the Dropbox client. The folder is already mirrored on my computer, when I install the next version of Ubuntu I have to explicitly add the PPA and install the proprietary Nautilus extension. If I don't do that, I can just drag the folder to another service. At some point it's easier to quit than to continue using it, which is why I predict Dropbox is fucked once Google provides the same transparent syncing with added value of its services.
If you check Google services (docs, mail), you get for just $5 -> 20GB of storage for a YEAR (or for $20 -> 80GB).
DropBox takes $9.99 a MONTH for 50GB, or around $120 a YEAR!
User lock-in is powerful, but if a competitor can offer a product for a magnitude less in price, I'd be friggin' worry my posterior off.
...which tells you the only logical acquirer. Any other will have a middleman of S3 to pay, which will make the financials not very sensible.
If GDrive releases and is viable, Dropbox should put on their best push-up bra and fishnets, and head over to seattle as soon as the mascara is dry.
[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2011/09/09/dropbox-may-have-decline...
Google is not the best with marketing, I haven't heard of any friends using Google Deals instead of Groupon yet either.
The thing about lockin might be true for existing DropBox users. But what If I am a new user and I am comparing Google and DropBox. Who do you think I will choose?
Also once google adds support to gdrive into all their existing offerings it will be difficult to compete with that.
I don't know if that holds true for any significant number of Dropbox's users but pricing and additional functionality could easily make an equivalent service more attractive for my use case.
If it works the same way as Dropbox, you'd just have to move files on your local machine from one shared directory to the other. Hell I wish all services were as easy.
Google is known for getting minimalism which is the most important UI element.
> the annoyance of having to upload a large amount of files to another service.
I imagine you'd just enter your Dropbox password into a migration form and have everything seamlessly pulled in. In fact, Google might even let you sync back, but Dropbox could add it easily it if not. By nature these services have to inter-operate.
It was probably a real threat to them 4.5 years ago. I can't imagine it is now. Dropbox has a large, happy fanbase that's going to keep using it and keep spreading. They're going to keep growing. They've got a small bit of lock-in if you use them a lot too, the annoyance of having to upload a large amount of files to another service. They've got a product that's a joy to use, which is not something Google is known for building outside of their core competency of search.
If I were Dropbox I'd simply view this as market validation (not that they need it at this point) more than anything else.