I'd say it's just as likely as not that they'll manage to create something worse, even with the with Dropbox as a nearly static target for 5 years.

Somehow Big Co's almost always manage to screw up even the relatively easy things.

I trust Dropbox way more than Google. They know what customer service means. Google can't even spell it. They are too proud and addicted to their power.

I'd be worried about Google doing the wrong thing correctly and Dropbox doing the right thing incorrectly.

Given that, I'm not sure who I would actually trust more.

I've had loads of issues with Google and continue to, even as a paying Apps customer. Not one has ever got resolved in my favour. It's like talking to a wall.

"Don't grow too big" is an insufficient but absolutely necessary condition for "Don't be evil".

I hope Dropbox doesn't grow too big.

My developer account and apps randomly disappeared from the Chrome Web Store. Even after providing a receipt of the verification payment, they said sorry I have to pay again. It was only $5, so I just did that, not a big deal but it took them weeks to tell me that and I lost lots of users in the time. If $5 means nothing to me, what does it mean to a billion dollar corporation?

And managing app accounts is a joke. I still keep getting errors while trying to log into various services. Do I want to contact Google support to sort it out? Hell no.

If you will not contact them to sort things out how can you complain? You contacted dropbox...

If blindly defending the corporation is what sails your boat, bon voyage!

If amazon can build it, Google can build it.

Proudly built in Google Seattle. We are hiring, by the way. :)

2) Because Gmail's main economic contribution to Google isn't the advertising, it is in signing people up for Google accounts, just like Yahoo Mail's main purpose is to stickily draw people to the Yahoo front page. After you're logged in on Google, your rate of searching goes up, compared to otherwise demographically similar people who are not logged in. (Same if you use Chrome or the Google toolbar, by the way.) Google likes when you search because Google is a multinational advertising company and about two thirds of their inventory by revenues is on their own search result pages.

3) Separately from the totally rational reasons to prefer Gmail (a strategically important service with negligible marginal costs) over Picasa (a strategically marginal service with relatively high marginal costs), Google is also a big multinational corporation, and internal politics still happen there. There is a political angle to any project getting additional resources. Picasa is not politically favored compared to, I don't know, that I-can't-believe-its-not-Facebook that they launched recently.

As such, see this split in case of unpaid accounts as another incentive for people to upgrade. As you don't pay anything, it's well within Google's right to optimize their offering to keep their costs as low as possible (ie. limiting picasa storage) and get the maximum marketing value (i.e practically unlimited mail storage).

Gmail is used as a collaboration as well as backup tool by at least a few of us. What it means is that we often tend to many attachments exceeding 10MB - and multiple versions of them. Not the most optimal usage I know, but it is very quick and convenient most users (even the not-so-technically proficient ones) are able to use it with ease.

http://i.imgur.com/ixlZ6.png

The good news is that Dropbox should integrate search soon. They will have to in order to keep up. Competition is a good thing for consumers.

according to his linkedin profile http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=5635&authType=na... you should contact him for "career opportunities"

See the byline in http://chrome.blogspot.com/2012/02/introducing-chrome-for-an... - Sundar Pichai is "SVP, Chrome and Apps".

This peculiar phrase appears four times in the article. Is it journalist-code for something?

Eric Schmidt: If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

Edited to add: I think it is preferable to spread information among service providers rather than concentrate it in one provider's hands. Google already has my search and email information. I do not think it advisable to add information from files to that.