zlacker

Some have postulated that this might be Google's Blackberry moment. On the flip side I wonder if its actually more like its Dropbox moment.

The press loves a David and Goliath story; the young disruptor versus the stodgy disrupted.[1] At that time, Dropbox was David, coming out of nowhere in a hurry and had a product that seemingly should be so obvious for Google to launch but hadn't - making Google seem antiquated and slow.

Fast forward a couple of years (aka a decade) and Dropbox is still going ok but Google Drive is by far more ubiquitous.

I guess only time will tell.

[1] Dropbox Versus The World https://www.fastcompany.com/3042436/dropbox-versus-the-world

>>someth+(OP)
Last time I tried to sync my computer to gdrive I waited 30 days before giving up on gdrive. Dropbox took less than 2 days, and stayed responsive.

>>mejuto+E1
Good point - I think the much more typical flow for Google Drive is cloud first for most documents and only uploading occasional offline document upload.

Which is perhaps why Google didn't really focus on creating a Dropbox like product until it was forced to because the more long term profitable for Google was a solution/vision based around a cloud first experience.

>>mejuto+E1
Dropbox iPad refuses to keep docs synced docs that I have specifically flagged for this. I routinely open the iPad somewhere without a connection and see that the docs are a month out of date.

Not as mission critical as the desktop app, but still pretty frustrating that they can't handle this core functionality after years and millions spent on other bells and whistles.

>>someth+(OP)
Google makes fuck all revenue from Drive, it never mattered. EVERYTHING at Google, most notably the cash fire that is Cloud, is funded by Search. This is the first time that is in danger and over 25 years they never came up with a fallback plan. This is an unmitigated disaster and purely the result of mismanagement.

>>nr2x+2W
Cloud operating losses have dropped substantially YoY, and revenue has risen steadily. It is at most a few years from profitability.

>>jessri+Id
Apple is forcing Dropbox to cripple itself because they now have to use Apple's own cloud file sync API which is hot garbage. I don't know if this is the cause of your iPad issue, but Dropbox on MacOS is about to get a whole lot shittier.

>>ryboso+751
We're in a recession. It's quite likely cloud falls into a race to the bottom.

The "at most a few years from profitability" after a period of what, 15 boom years?, doesn't sound that great as the 3rd place contender.

>>ryboso+751
Agreed.

Also the comparison is between Google versus Dropbox (the underdog David that's analogous to OpenAI), not Google versus Amazon or even Google versus Microsoft.

Google is 51% of office productivity software market versus Microsoft. Microsoft is at 47%, Dropbox isn't even listed. [1]

Dropbox has a decent share of the personal cloud storage market but has really failed to expand beyond that vertical or become significantly profitable. [2]

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/983299/worldwide-market-...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1328893/global-file-shar...

>>ryboso+751
The point is Cloud is still 100% subsidized by Search, and if Search loses even 5% of market share in the next 12 mo it is a disaster as GCP cannot fill the gap as they are still losing money. The velocity at which they are losing money is immaterial to the fact they are not nearly ready to plug a hole if Bing take share.

>>nr2x+cu2
I think cloud's net revenue loss was very small last Q they reported. They may cut on some personal and services and become profitable if decide so.

>>nr2x+cu2
Google has over 165B in cash on hand. Nothing is that dire.

>>nerpde+II3
Nobody got fired for choosing IBM either.

>>dreamc+l61
Very interesting and depressing. Thanks!