Not sure if the acquisition makes strategic sense for Dropbox, but at least I have some confidence that Mailbox wouldn't simply disappear: Dropbox core product has a freemium model, and they are very successful company.
I really do hope that they progress on the path they started instead of just acquiring mailbox for the talent. I know they said that they would but thats what we heard about Sparrow when they were bought by Google and the results sucked.
Good luck to everyone on the mailbox team, I love your product, please don't kill it.
No, they were pretty up front that Sparrow was a talent acquisition. They said that the product would continue to exist but they weren't going to update it and they were going to work on new projects at Google.
The Gmail app is slick, but extremely slow for me (on iPhone 5), as in "it's really annoying every time I use this app but I've moved away from native Mail and inertia is a hell of a thing." Other people I've talked to have had similar experiences. I'm excited to try Mailbox.
you can't be serious, it's the beginnings of something good, but it has all kinds of problems, it fails to load email often (reporting "something has gone wrong.."), it routinely doesn't clear the red read indicator, it's laggy and sluggish. I am sure Google will make it kickass in the fullness of time, but for now, that's not what gmail/iOS is.
Unread indicator is always wrong, especially when you use multiple devices. Seems very I characteristic of google. It's been that way since they released the app.
> " To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to your Dropbox…"
I did read the article. However we have heard things like that before so I'm a bit wary that 6 months down the line DB isn't going to reconsider and kill the mailbox platform.
To be frank, it's really hard to believe that. They're being acquired, it isn't up to them anymore what happens to Mailbox. They signed the keys away to Drew Houston and the management team at Dropbox. Mailbox dies the moment Drew decides to kill it.
Every time someone here responds when their name is mentioned, I think of this scene from "Annie Hall":
Alvy Singer: [the man behind him in line is talking loudly] What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it!
Alvy Singer: [to audience] Whaddya do when you get stuck in a movie line with a guy like this behind you?
Man in Theatre Line: Wait a minute, why can't I give my opinion? It's a free country!
Alvy Singer: He can give it... do you have to give it so loud? I mean, aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is, Marshall
McLuhan, you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan!
Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!
Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me...
[pulls McLuhan out from behind a nearby poster]
Alvy Singer: come over here for a second... tell him!
Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!
Now if you were to acquire 49% of Mailbox, I might believe that. But you must understand our doubts -- it feels like every single time a giant company acquires a useful little startup, the users eventually (and often sooner than later) get burned by it.
I'm open to your Mailbox acquisition being the exception to this trend, but I hope you understand my healthy skepticism.
That doesn't really strike me as relevant? Many "businesses" are one or two people. Obviously "giant" is subjective but considering the largest companies are a few orders of magnitude bigger, I maintain what I said earlier: Only people who are immersed in the startup world consider Dropbox a "giant" company.
Just to add some objectivity to the debate, in France, between 250 and 4999 employees a company is considered to be an "intermediate size company" (as long as the revenue is below 1.5 G€).
I don't know the American standard, but I'd be surprised if it isn't similar.
This is what is said LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE TIME a company is acquired -- right along with "nothing is changing" and we'll "continue to operate with the vision that made us attractive to $acquirer in the first place"
Without a more clear rationale for why things won't change, it's pretty reasonable to assume that the product is at risk no matter what you say. The fact is, almost regardless of your intentions, your organization is going to put its thumbprint on the product.
What that means is unclear to external customers, and is also often unclear internally. If you do know what your plans are for it internally, you're still probably not going to say (though I'd love to be wrong).
Are you sure you're being LITERAL? I certainly remember some google acquisitions where it was stated straight up that the product would be discontinued in the initial press release.
It's not actually the case that every single acquisition in the world involves public platitudes about the continuance of management, the product, culture, office location, or lunch room perks.
Here's my chief gripe with using hyperbole and "literally" - If the word "literally" can be used non-literally, in a hyperbole or a metaphor, then it stops serving its purpose of marking a sentence as being literal. Then, when a sentence permits metaphoric and literal interpretations and you stick "literally" in it, nothing changes - it can still be either metaphoric or literal. The only solution I see is using "really literally" to mean that your sentence isn't metaphoric. Until people start using "really literally" in a metaphoric way. I virtually really literally actually in fact don't want to see that happen.
Merriam Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary already accept the use of "literally" to mean "virtually" in informal contexts. It's a losing battle.
I haven't tried the app (no iPhone). Can someone explain to me why the Mailbox app is so great? From the intro video, I see a typical email app with a couple of extra gestures thrown in.
Like Sparrow, it seems it's more marketing and hype than a radical upgrade to the email experience.
My outsider view: they are going to build a full-fledged productivity suite. They have the storage, versioning, you can view files/docs and now you have an email client. The "obvious" next move would be getting into the online document editing space. But then, this is me just speculating from the sidelines.
I don't know about "very clever", but if you look at Dropbox as moving towards an iCloud-like service where its more than just data, it make sense. But it sounds a lot like a talent acquisition that comes with a nice mail app that probably has some similar technical challenges to the things Dropbox already does well. Seems like a good way to kickstart a Dropbox email platform.
If you look at their foray into photos and the way they talk about their service now, Dropbox is becoming a lifestyle brand focused on your personal data.
Meanwhile, the mobile e-mail client that the Mailbox team built is so cool that it convinced about a million people to let Mailbox store a full copy of their e-mail archive ... in 10 weeks.
That kind of strategic value means it's smart for them to swoop the product and team up RIGHT NOW, even if they had to pay a premium to do it.
I've actually been somewhat hoping Dropbox would venture into email. Their service has been reliable for me for years, and it'd be nice to have a decent Gmail competitor at last.
A possible first step towards matching the broad ecosystem of their new chief competitors, Google Drive and Microsoft Skydrive. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see them acquire an office app suite next.
Are there any viable competitors to Google Docs err Drive and MS Office? Office is the feature powerhouse and Drive is lean and fast service, I haven't seen anything that can be acquired around!
I don't find Drive to be particularly lean/fast -- it's been easier for me and my peers to work on content/formatting on Word than email it; Drive's lack of features is certainly not a proxy for being lightweight.
There are so many options once Dropbox can theoritcally be accessed through an inbox interface...
Mailbox could be a first step to competing with Messages/gChat. Instead of rolling out their own email, Dropbox can be another type of account Mailbox works with to send pictures, videos, files over data rather than texting or emailing. An odd feature to roll out without acquiring a popular product, but making Dropbox the goto rather than the link attached to something else.
Why should Dropbox have a message client (or email client). I fail to see how they are connected. I feel the same about Twitter launching a music service.
There used to be the joke that every software expands until it can read mail. Nowadays I think we need a new saying. Every software company expands until... it has rebuilt every other software product (not as catchy).
Not messaging per-se exactly, but making Dropbox an account that could be accessed through Mailbox. The standalone messaging without sending a file as well is just a wacky idea of a different direction Dropbox could decide to take things.
For everyone thinking Mailbox is getting Sparrowfied, there's good news:
To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to your Dropbox.
I'm so glad that Mailbox is going to stay alive. It has been just one month since I removed Sparrow and started using Mailbox mostly.
(1) join dropbox, probably for a pretty penny with stock options that will probably look very nice when Dropbox goes public -- fuel further growth and integration with Dropbox with even more significant resources at your disposal (including HIRING really good engineers a la "come work for Dropbox!")
(2) stay as a high-risk start-up with no revenue, no tested plans of monetization with huge problems of scale (due to its rapid growth) and create a funding round which liquidates your ownership stake significantly, puts you @ the mercy of some risk averse VC's and limits your exit options (depending upon valuation)
I love the product, but I have to admit this (1) would be my choice as well
For those who are interested in an alternative service check out Right Inbox. Lets you schedule emails in Gmail, allows tracking emails and setting reminders. http://www.rightinbox.com/
>>To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to your Dropbox.
I love the promise of the internet. Nimble upstarts competing on a level playing field with huge corporations. A decentralized market without physical agency. More owners and more competition.
Well, Dropbox itself is competing "on a level playing field with huge corporations". See: competition from Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive, and so on. All companies with comparatively huge amounts of resources.
After that forum post where the user claimed Dropbox had leaked their email to spammers, I have severe reservations about giving them the actual credentials to my email account, whether or not the allegations were correct.
Argh, I hope I'm not waiting in line for the same experience.. :-)
I'm still curious to see if I like it (I am an inbox-zero person), so I'll stick it out.. But yeah, I've been in line for 3 weeks now or so, I think...
Android fans take note of how their app is iPhone only at the moment. This is important. In every flamewar people argue that Android is the same essentially as iPhone or better, but there are two HUGE gaps
1. iOS gets new apps faster. In this case, Mailbox is iOS
2. Accessories are harder to find for the large gamut of Android-running devices.
(being an Android fan, I have a self-interest in getting companies to release Android apps faster than they currently do)
I feel like any communications app, especially e-mail related, that's trying to label itself as "modern" needs to include some support for crypto as a requirement. I hope the Dropbox people push for things like that from Mailbox, given their past security problems.
"This means not only continuing to scale the service, but also including support for more email providers and mobile devices."
Please, please let this mean that they plan on supporting EAS. Migrating to Google Apps for Business in not an option for me, and everyone and his brother is building fancy IMAP-only email clients, while I'm stuck with the default mail client on my iPhone. I love Mailbox's interface, but I barely get a chance to use it, as my primary email address that 99% of my email goes through is on Outlook.com-hosted email.
The biggest problem with Exchange Active Sync is that to implement it you have to pay a licensing fee to Microsoft. For a lot of smaller developers that simply isn't an option, especially for something they are giving away for free or for a very low price.
Also, EAS is proprietary, whereas IMAP is open. Outlook.com should simply add IMAP support.
Second that, although I never got anything but the mail to work (no contacts, cal, tasks) and since evolution is a piece of crap (at least the version that comes with FC 18) I had to use thunderbird which doesn't have cal. But it's still worth it!
what's going to happen to orchestra? i actually use it all the time, almost as much as mailbox -- is this going over to dropbox or will it be gasp deadpooled?
Sometimes I wish companies would just focus on what they do well instead of trying to expand forever, wedging themselves into every niche of your life and watering down the utility of their offerings.
Acquired before I've even got my invite! :) Still another 276,000 people in front of me. I really hope Dropbox keeps it around (and from the comments that seems to be the case).
146 comments
[ 444 ms ] story [ 4752 ms ] threadI really do hope that they progress on the path they started instead of just acquiring mailbox for the talent. I know they said that they would but thats what we heard about Sparrow when they were bought by Google and the results sucked.
Good luck to everyone on the mailbox team, I love your product, please don't kill it.
Money straight out the window. Ungh.
> " To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to your Dropbox…"
(actually, come work on it: https://www.dropbox.com/jobs :))
Every time someone here responds when their name is mentioned, I think of this scene from "Annie Hall":
Alvy Singer: [the man behind him in line is talking loudly] What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it!
Alvy Singer: [to audience] Whaddya do when you get stuck in a movie line with a guy like this behind you?
Man in Theatre Line: Wait a minute, why can't I give my opinion? It's a free country!
Alvy Singer: He can give it... do you have to give it so loud? I mean, aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is, Marshall McLuhan, you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan!
Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!
Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me...
[pulls McLuhan out from behind a nearby poster]
Alvy Singer: come over here for a second... tell him!
Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!
Alvy Singer: Boy, if life were only like this!
(Sometimes it is here at Hacker News.)
By the way, I'm Woody Allen.
Hmm, I don't think that feature works like that. Try watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY#t=1m44s
I'm open to your Mailbox acquisition being the exception to this trend, but I hope you understand my healthy skepticism.
I don't know the American standard, but I'd be surprised if it isn't similar.
Source: http://www.insee.fr/fr/methodes/default.asp?page=definitions...
Without a more clear rationale for why things won't change, it's pretty reasonable to assume that the product is at risk no matter what you say. The fact is, almost regardless of your intentions, your organization is going to put its thumbprint on the product.
What that means is unclear to external customers, and is also often unclear internally. If you do know what your plans are for it internally, you're still probably not going to say (though I'd love to be wrong).
http://xkcd.com/725/
It's not actually the case that every single acquisition in the world involves public platitudes about the continuance of management, the product, culture, office location, or lunch room perks.
Just a literally a metric ton of them.
P.S. Use "practically" instead.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/literally
- hey look, Drew Houston disguised as Woody Allen
- what? Really? Or figuratively ?
- Both, but I will literally explode if another negative comment gets upvoted
... [Hamlet music plays as man lights cigar (UK only)]
Ahhhhh,HN.
http://xkcd.com/1108/
I just hope the boss will understand working on my start-up in my off time is important :)
Like Sparrow, it seems it's more marketing and hype than a radical upgrade to the email experience.
My outsider view: they are going to build a full-fledged productivity suite. They have the storage, versioning, you can view files/docs and now you have an email client. The "obvious" next move would be getting into the online document editing space. But then, this is me just speculating from the sidelines.
Meanwhile, the mobile e-mail client that the Mailbox team built is so cool that it convinced about a million people to let Mailbox store a full copy of their e-mail archive ... in 10 weeks.
That kind of strategic value means it's smart for them to swoop the product and team up RIGHT NOW, even if they had to pay a premium to do it.
Drive's killer feature, though, is collaboration.
Mailbox could be a first step to competing with Messages/gChat. Instead of rolling out their own email, Dropbox can be another type of account Mailbox works with to send pictures, videos, files over data rather than texting or emailing. An odd feature to roll out without acquiring a popular product, but making Dropbox the goto rather than the link attached to something else.
There used to be the joke that every software expands until it can read mail. Nowadays I think we need a new saying. Every software company expands until... it has rebuilt every other software product (not as catchy).
"Every software company expands until it has implemented half of Emacs."
Sort of a product-centric version of Greenspun's rule.
To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to your Dropbox.
I'm so glad that Mailbox is going to stay alive. It has been just one month since I removed Sparrow and started using Mailbox mostly.
Why not do a funding round?
(1) join dropbox, probably for a pretty penny with stock options that will probably look very nice when Dropbox goes public -- fuel further growth and integration with Dropbox with even more significant resources at your disposal (including HIRING really good engineers a la "come work for Dropbox!")
(2) stay as a high-risk start-up with no revenue, no tested plans of monetization with huge problems of scale (due to its rapid growth) and create a funding round which liquidates your ownership stake significantly, puts you @ the mercy of some risk averse VC's and limits your exit options (depending upon valuation)
I love the product, but I have to admit this (1) would be my choice as well
Financially --
- Cash out the existing (presumably closely-held) equity holders with 100% of deal proceeds.
"Existentially" --
Reduce execution risk by getting the team access to:
- Existing battle-tested deployment infrastructure (& devops)
- Existing pool of engineers that can be assigned to the project, and who are familiar with the infrastructure
- HR, facilities, logistics, support, etc...
>>To be clear, Mailbox is not going away. The product needs to grow fast, and we believe that joining Dropbox is the best way to make that happen. Plus, imagine what cool things you could do if your Mailbox was connected to your Dropbox.
Then I read about stuff like this.
I do - Dropbox isn't and doesn't want to be just a dumb, syncable file store. First your photos, now your email.
Good lord.
Hopefully the acquisition by Dropbox speeds up the line, maybe?
I used it once, realized it turns my inbox into a todo app, and uninstalled it.
I'm still curious to see if I like it (I am an inbox-zero person), so I'll stick it out.. But yeah, I've been in line for 3 weeks now or so, I think...
1. iOS gets new apps faster. In this case, Mailbox is iOS 2. Accessories are harder to find for the large gamut of Android-running devices.
(being an Android fan, I have a self-interest in getting companies to release Android apps faster than they currently do)
Here's to a stronger Dropbox and a long-life for Mailbox!
Please, please let this mean that they plan on supporting EAS. Migrating to Google Apps for Business in not an option for me, and everyone and his brother is building fancy IMAP-only email clients, while I'm stuck with the default mail client on my iPhone. I love Mailbox's interface, but I barely get a chance to use it, as my primary email address that 99% of my email goes through is on Outlook.com-hosted email.
Also, EAS is proprietary, whereas IMAP is open. Outlook.com should simply add IMAP support.
Now that leaves Apple and MS...
I have one hell of a startup app idea. Anybody out there good with objective-c?