>
"You say that as if $60 million would be any less absurd?"I find neither price absurd. It is clear that Dropbox has not bought Mailbox for the purposes of selling copies of Mailbox - making $100mm back that way is, of course, insanity.
Dropbox right now is having its core feature (online storage) attacked by competitors with far-reaching and deeply integrated stacks. See: iCloud, Google, etc, where the cloud storage is deeply integrated specific content on your device. Photos, documents, email, etc.
It would seem like they're trying to develop this stack for themselves and take on Google and Apple directly. Whether or not this is the right strategy I cannot say, but a cloud email service with a best-of-breed UI will certainly help them cement the market share they need.
And having seen Mailbox, it's very competitive with what is IMO the next-best mobile email client, GMail, and takes iOS's Mail.app out back and shoots it.
I expect the next moves to be either developing or acquiring media sharing (photos, videos, etc) apps. This is the sort of ecosystem they need to create to hope to sell Dropbox as the "your data, everywhere, without lock-in" value proposition.
Mailbox isn't just a half-decent email UI, it is the best email UI we've seen in ages, in a field where there is no shortage of competition. Even vaunted Apple's email app pales in comparison.
I find neither price absurd. It is clear that Dropbox has not bought Mailbox for the purposes of selling copies of Mailbox - making $100mm back that way is, of course, insanity.
Dropbox right now is having its core feature (online storage) attacked by competitors with far-reaching and deeply integrated stacks. See: iCloud, Google, etc, where the cloud storage is deeply integrated specific content on your device. Photos, documents, email, etc.
It would seem like they're trying to develop this stack for themselves and take on Google and Apple directly. Whether or not this is the right strategy I cannot say, but a cloud email service with a best-of-breed UI will certainly help them cement the market share they need.
And having seen Mailbox, it's very competitive with what is IMO the next-best mobile email client, GMail, and takes iOS's Mail.app out back and shoots it.
I expect the next moves to be either developing or acquiring media sharing (photos, videos, etc) apps. This is the sort of ecosystem they need to create to hope to sell Dropbox as the "your data, everywhere, without lock-in" value proposition.
Mailbox isn't just a half-decent email UI, it is the best email UI we've seen in ages, in a field where there is no shortage of competition. Even vaunted Apple's email app pales in comparison.