Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing.
One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where next?
Hello Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/um5zf95urdk3zmg/2SaSCUIQd8
And I've told a few photographers about this, and a few weeks later a friend of a friend of a friend excitedly told me on a forum how you can photo share in Dropbox.
And what I'm basically seeing is that the problem of "file sync" is being considered as solved by lay consumers, who really aren't prioritising encryption, and the problems that they now have is "share this directory of photos", and "share that directory of videos", and "sync this music privately, but let me play it back".
Dropbox isn't just file sync anymore.
What it is, is a serious threat to Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Amazon MP3 Locker, Google Play Music, iTunes, etc.
And consumers are not thinking in terms of encrypted sync, they're just thinking in terms of "I just want to do X, why is it so hard", and so I can't see this (very nice) solution really solving the problems that consumers have, that will make them prioritise security.
One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where next?
Hello Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sc/um5zf95urdk3zmg/2SaSCUIQd8
And I've told a few photographers about this, and a few weeks later a friend of a friend of a friend excitedly told me on a forum how you can photo share in Dropbox.
And what I'm basically seeing is that the problem of "file sync" is being considered as solved by lay consumers, who really aren't prioritising encryption, and the problems that they now have is "share this directory of photos", and "share that directory of videos", and "sync this music privately, but let me play it back".
Dropbox isn't just file sync anymore.
What it is, is a serious threat to Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Amazon MP3 Locker, Google Play Music, iTunes, etc.
And consumers are not thinking in terms of encrypted sync, they're just thinking in terms of "I just want to do X, why is it so hard", and so I can't see this (very nice) solution really solving the problems that consumers have, that will make them prioritise security.