I know some of you have been waiting for my thoughts on Dropbox acquiring Mailbox — my apologies, I’ve been sidetracked by SXSW SARS. I also realize I still need to write my longer thoughts about how Mailbox changed my email habits. For now, let me just congratulate the Mailbox team. They built something truly amazing and I could not be happier that the product will continue to live on and grow under the wings of Dropbox.
Many of you know how excited I’ve been about Mailbox over the past several months — and not just as an investor, but as a user. Email has been so broken for so long and these guys were the first ones really thinking outside the — sorry — box. So the success they’ve seen could not be any less surprising. I think Dropbox was very savvy to make this move and I think it seems like a great fit. Now get me a damn iPad client.
“Well, you’ve got to remember, 100 million sounds like a pretty small number to me, actually. We’ve got a lot more Office users. And actually if you even want to go to the cloud, we have a lot of Hotmail and SkyDrive users. I’m not beating on Dropbox. They’re a fine little startup and that’s great.”
Steve Ballmer, speaking with Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance on the topic of Dropbox.
I often predict that a comment will come back to bite someone from Microsoft in the ass. But I can say with near certainty that this one will. I mean, what a monumentally stupid thing to say.
What’s the upside here? Goliath beating its chest? Does he think startups will cower at that? Why would they? It’s clear from this statement that Microsoft is either:
> a) arrogant and thus, ripe for disruption
> b) scared shitless of disruption
It’s not clear which is actually worse.
Can’t imagine why both Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive have big updates today. You’d think the entry something else into their airspace was imminent…
Amir Efrati reports that Google is close to launching a new product called “Drive”, a would-be Dropbox/Box/iCloud/etc competitor.
Before I left TechCrunch full time, I was hot on the trail of this project. Yes, Google had a Google Drive project that will killed off years ago, but a new one emerged last year and was being extensively used internally once again.
Last I heard, this new Google Drive was said to be much better than the one that was killed off (which was killed off because many thought it “sucked”). It included a web component as well as Dropbox-like software piece that runs on your desktop. Mobile will be key as well, obviously.
The most recent thing I heard supports what Efrati is reporting: that the prices are going to be more competitive than Dropbox.
As I’ve been saying, it’s coming for real this time. And it will have a software component to take on Dropbox.
High-res
