Dropbox becoming an hero

This is another example why I do not believe anyone who says that the private sector is smarter or more efficient than the public sector.

Dropbox is competing in cloud hosting/file sharing against google, amazon, microsoft and host of other companies. For such a service you want stability, stability, stability. If you build something based on their service you take a leap of faith as you trust them to keep the service operating and handle your data faithfully. If they can not guarantee the links and files for a foreseeable future then what use is it to build on their architecture? That the service will be there and keep hosting your files is the starting point after which user interface, security and other thing come into consideration.This put them at a disadvantage against the giants as they are a smaller company, more likely to go down.

However, they had one major edge over their competitors: the public folder. This was the easiest system available for file sharing when it came out and a lot of people started using dropbox because of it. This gives both a network effect and a boost to trust from having more users. It also locks the users into Dropbox as they would have to change all their links, their programs etc. Dropbox was a better filesharing service than any of their competitors and this is how many people use it. For instance, Dropbox is used in the scientific community as a cheap and easy way to host and share electronic journals and provide the references in hyperlinks. Without it the archive and the links are deas.

Today dropbox announces that it will in fact not have its competitive edge, that it will not guarantee that its users links are stable and that its users will have to redo every link just as if they switch platforms. It's very hard to get people and organisations to change their routines for things like file handling once you have enough people accustomed to your product, that is why companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook can get away with their shit. What Dropbox does is really pushing the envelope on driving away customers. It is like giving you a slap in the face while giving a one time offer to switch to another provider. If you also take into account the positive feedback, every customer who leaves makes the service worse/riskier for those who remains, this might actually end Dropbox which means that there is even less of a reason to stay.

Regardless of how this goes for Dropbox as a business this is a significant loss for society. This will mean roughly a billion dead links all over the internet on sites without native image hosting. This will mean that all businesses built on the architecture of dropbox public folders will lose time, money, reputation or just close down. It illustrates the dangers of putting infrastructure in private hands. I would argue that both a decentralised system where people own their own servers or making cloud hosting public are better options than the current system. There is danger in putting even more data in goverments hands but we already trust them not to abuse more important data than this and there are mechanism to hold it accountable.