Why can't a company use cloud? It's not like there's Amazonbox client I could install now and get the same service. Dropbox never was about the storage itself, IMHO - it was about the ease of usage. There were enough options to get storage - cloud or non-cloud - when it came out, but none of them had the easy folder-based sync and sharing (public folder) of Dropbox.

It's not if the company uses cloud or not. It's if they are solving the hard problems or instead, outsourcing the technical challenges to their cloud provider while charging the user a non justifiable premium for the intuitive user interface :-) So it's about the eventual value add and the business case.

The challenging part is to provide the back-end. Get massive storage, with proper checksum integrity, at a cost effective value and with flawless security.

A single command (and minor variations around it):

aws s3 sync <name_source_dir> s3://<name_target_bucket>

get's you all that. It can be easily mapped to an intuitive user interface by a software development boutique in weeks.

And because that is the difficult part, it seems for the first 8 years of their history that was solved for them by AWS, according to their own reported history.

Sharing a folder or file from Dropbox is no more intuitive than using the S3 console. Looking at the very colorful history of security issues around Dropbox [1] it's certainly not safer.

So why would a user pay more for storage costs than with a cloud provider, with notoriously less security? Does a tiny layer on top one or more cloud providers justify the add-on value for the user or the current valuation of 9 Billion dollars?

[1] "Criticism of Dropbox": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Dropbox

And for what its worth, systems like minio have emerged due to that commercial innovation. AWS has made a lot of investment in that system and will earn perpetual annuities from it, but by creating a defacto protocol we now get many choices that use its API. Its interesting because AWS never was benevolent with their S3 code, they just created a novel and rigorous offering that became worthy of emulation. Dropbox really hasn't done any equivalent contribution. If anything, the open source projects that have emerged to offer self-hosted alternatives to it are more feature-complete and extensible- such as nextcloud/owncloud, pydio, syncthing, etc.

side note: I'm filled with regret for every document that I authored on Dropbox Paper. It didn't last for long, but there was a time that it was the official wiki for a company I worked at. Its not impossible to export, but never with full-fidelity.

> Sharing a folder or file from Dropbox is no more intuitive than using the S3 console.

I've not really used the S3 console but, at least on macOS, sharing a file from Dropbox is as simple as "right-click on the file in Finder, Share..." then enter an email address or create a share link from the popup. Or I can right-click and "Copy Dropbox Link" if the direct link is good enough.

Is the S3 console simpler than a right-click?

Even easier and safer, create a signed url that expires after 5 min...Send it to the user...

aws s3 presign s3://awsexamplebucket/test2.txt --expires-in 300

But now you have to know which bucket the file is in, have the AWS CLI tools installed, use Terminal, copy the URL to messages / email, etc.

How is this easier than "right-click, pick a menu option"?

(If I want an expiring Dropbox link, it's there under 'link settings' in the pop-up. Admittedly only has date granularity but still there as an option.)

Example from the console: "Setting up an Amazon S3 bucket to share files"

https://gist.github.com/pjkelly/be2cd3881e766620a411

Again, how is this easier than a single right-click in Finder? Also don't those files need to be public to create a link? You can't create a link to a non-public file which grants access either directly via the link or with a password?

...are we deliberately reenacting the original Dropbox thread here?

It usually ends up happening when the Dropbox thread comes up, it’s really interesting seeing both sides rehash the same points.

Their fundament is UX, not technology. Their technology could be whatever and users wouldn't care - the users care about syncing their files easily. Few geeks might flame about it on a tech forum, but nothing more.

Not that I like Dropbox too much. I'm going to switch to my self hosted solution. But it's certainly not as easy as using Dropbox, even as someone who uses AWS since 2012 frequently.

The median Dropbox user doesn’t know what s3 or is what ‘console’ means.