When Dropbox 1.0 launched in December 2010 it already had millions of users. During its short time in beta, Dropbox vastly simplified the face of cloud services and brought the concept of online storage to the less technically savvy demographic.
Dropbox gives users the ability to store their files online – which in itself is not a new concept; cloud backup services have existed for a long time. What has made Dropbox a market-altering product is its simplicity of design. Whereas previously existing offsite storage products offered some combination of a proprietary frontend for handling more advanced features and an FTP client for choosing what to back up, Dropbox aims for its general use case to be invisible. Through deep integration with the operating system Dropbox offers its service primarily through a regular appearing folder in one’s file system. Users simply move their files into the folder as they would any other and the folder is mirrored on dropbox.com, and as an identical ‘Dropbox folder’ by any other device the user has connected to the service.
A user can make a file sync to all of their machines with Dropbox as simply as if they were using a USB stick. The process is simple whether enacted by a power user in a terminal or a computer novice in a GUI. Decades of user experience work has gone into making the core task of moving files around on a computer as friendly as possible, so instead of reinventing it for the cloud Dropbox simply piggy backs on the existing technologies that every computer user is familiar with. This makes Dropbox more user friendly than more complicated competing services such as MobileMe.
Dropbox occupies two main niches, file sharing and backing up data. The ability to use one’s Dropbox folder as a USB stick is the core attraction of the service in the file-sharing domain as it allows for syncing files among devices in a more seamless way than has ever been previously implemented. Dropbox also lets users easily share files with each other. Cloud syncing on its own makes Dropbox attractive as a tool for backing up data, and Dropbox also stores old versions of changed files for 30 days. These simple approaches taken to solving the common problems of making one’s workspace follow them and of backing up one’s data, combined with the practice of offering a genuinely valuable free version of the software and a rewards scheme offering more free storage for inviting other users has encouraged widespread adoption in its own right. More importantly it has encouraged software developers to rely on Dropbox’s service to offer some cloud features, or even to build their service on top of Dropbox’s. This is Dropbox’s true genius.
By creating a service that is perceived to be reliable, free, easy, and already widespread, and by opening up its API to developers, Dropbox has made itself the de facto way to add simple ‘cloud services’ to any application. Well-known products such a 1Password and QuickOffice, as well as a plethora of note taking, bookmark syncing and media management applications[1] now rely on their users having Dropbox accounts to use their cross device syncing functionality.
The long fancied age of full-on cloud computing via a technology like Chrome OS may or may not ever come to fruition, but Dropbox doesn’t need it to become a reality in order to integrate more fully into users’ workflows. More and more users are adapting to working with multiple devices, in many cases not all of which are designed to work together. I am an Android user who also owns an iPad. The two devices do not share data well. Dropbox allows services I use on both to work seamlessly, allowing me, for example, to edit my documents in QuickOffice no matter which device I happen to have with me.
It is difficult to ascertain the effect that Dropbox has had on its competitive space, as cloud storage is too amorphous to consider as a whole. Apple’s MobileMe, for example, is a subscription service that appears to be in the midst of closing down. It facilitates specific Apple-centric syncing functionality and allows users to store their files online. Given that it competes significantly with other products including the Google Apps suite, crediting its closure fully to Dropbox is at best premature, but Dropbox’s creation certainly muted some of its thunder. It is certainly the case that Dropbox has placed an effective lower bound on how much free space a cloud storage system must offer to be competitive. Competing products Mozy and SugarSync both now offer similar amounts of data storage for free plans.
Staying true to the strategy of keeping the user facing service simple, reliable, and blatantly useful, and the developer facing API accessible, will allow Dropbox to continue growing as more users are driven to it through its software tie ins. As existing free users see more of their services storing valuable data on it, they will become more likely to upgrade to a paid service. In the meantime, Dropbox will continue to work to better identify duplicate data to drive down storage costs, and perhaps once it has enough funding, migrate off of Amazon’s S3 service. There is also a strong incentive for Dropbox to work towards OEM deals to have their software preinstalled on operating systems. Given their reputation of offering a useful service at no charge, there are strong incentives for PC manufacturers to bundle their software.
Dropbox is also likely to work towards enhancing its web interface. By making uploaded media streamable on dropbox.com, the company could easily incentivize its users to upgrade to paid plans in order to store large files online for convenient media consumption. As this enhancement would not change the desktop experience, it would not betray the hitherto successful simplicity paradigm. While clearly a difficult balancing act with simplicity, the more dropbox can support functionality usually associated with the desktop in its web interface or through partnerships with existing web services such as Google Docs, the better suited it will be to the continuing shift towards webcentric computing.
In the long term, if fast enough Internet to allow for the speedy download of the full content of one’s computer ever becomes widespread, Dropbox will be particularly well placed to serve this market. Its existence creates the infrastructure required for one’s whole workspace setup to be loaded to any machine one which one is working. Even in the more direct future, the movement towards the use of smaller self-standing ‘apps’ will allow users to store their most often used programs and possibly even their current states on Dropbox’s servers for easy loading when working at a new terminal.