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Comment by elblanco | Hacker News Reader

Wonder how this will impact DropBox.

Probably not at all. This is just cloud storage, albeit at a low price per GB. DropBox's secret sauce is its seamless sync across desktops and to the cloud.

I'm not sure if Google would even want to support the DropBox model, which makes desktops play nice with the cloud, whereas Google would rather have the desktop die. EDIT: Looks like Google does allow 3rd party apps to implement desktop sync though.

The difference in price between amazon S3 (on top of which dropbox relies) and google is too big for dropbox to be competitive as it is now. Things must change.

Scenario1: Dropbox will have no other choice but switch their client to support google's API and, consequently, lower the price. They will gain a new load of customers and do fine.

Scenario2: google acquires dropbox. See scenario 1

Scenario3: google releases their own sync client/dropbox clone. Dropbox dies. Google wins doing evil (is competition evil?)

Scenario4: Google does like Pontius Pilate: releases API and let the market decide. Dropbox still likely to win.

Did I miss anything? It seems to me Dropbox has 1/4 chance of getting screwed, 3/4 of win.

For scenario 1: I guess a secondary question, if scenario 1 happens, what this means for S3 as a cloud storage solution? I know the market is not that big, but google's cost competitiveness on cloud storage has to have some effect.

2: I think the likelihood of this is low, unless Google does it to kill off dropbox.

3: I personally would probably use both, but for different reason, google's sync so I can remotely manage documents I want to use in google's apps, and dropbox for a quick and dumb file syncing for other stuff. I can see the competitiveness still working out here.

4: I agree, I'm a huge fan of dropbox, see #3 above.

I only see pricing pressure on Dropbox at the moment. This is an opportunity for someone else to replicate Dropbox with Google Docs backend. I presume, such a replication will start off with a platform with additional functionality (like, Google Docs tie-in) is the advantage and perhaps existing Google customers to convert is easier.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google is now in talks with Dropbox to acquire to them.

Why? What would Dropbox give Google that it doesn't sound like they've basically already built. (Other then the brand and all of it's users)

I agree, plus Dropbox is built on what is essentially a competitor's product. They'd likely have to do some significant re-engineering to make this work off of Google's Doc Store.

Google doesn't have the sync app(in public). That is what Dropbox is all about. Syncing data across different platforms. They could be building on internally so who knows.

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