![]() The sheets applet on Android is particularly horrible. Intents are nice for a lot of things, sharing a file to the cloud has not proven to be one, it’s still too cumbersome. Dropbox easily has both, organically expanding it’s business through it’s users.Drive is skin deep, it’s a nice interface over the existing Docs and Sheets UI, and on Android that fact is almost apparent. Second to that would be network effects, which pretty much all effective startups in this generation have nailed. The technology is almost a solved problem, it’s building a compelling product that is interesting. I think the bigger and deeper question is what does Dropbox (and Drive) look like on a Windows 8 Metro system? Is it the classic icon in the tray, or is it more like an integrated service providing Metro apps with backend storage in the cloud?This to me would answer a lot of questions about the future of computing.The other thing that came to mind, all the great startups really consist of great UX. Being in the cloud to me is FREEDOM of 2 critical types:- Freedom from the desktop/client/hard drive- Freedom from being locked into a platformGoogle Drive provides only the first. Because I didn’t want to be locked into either a PC or Mac environment, and I wanted the freedom to move between the two ecosystems and access files equally well on both.And last week I have migrated all my work documents(!) to Dropbox, because I don’t want to be dependent on any company IT vendor, VPN application, or jump through any other legacy hoops. ![]() And there’s plenty of lessons on that.I have migrated all my personal documents to Dropbox a year ago as I moved to Mac. ![]() But, when it comes to your personal files, the thing that is the closest to personal property in the digital age (even more than your customized play lists, bookmarks, etc.), not having the freedom to migrate, access, and manage your property at will is unacceptable risk.The problem is not what the platform allows you to do today, but what it may be tempted to do tomorrow. Dropbox is far superior to Google Drive or to any other platform-specific drive because it is a platform-AGNOSTIC repository of your files.It is for the very reason why Dropbox was such a huge success to start with.I think that, in any situation, getting locked into an ecosystem (Apple, Google, etc.) is very risky.
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