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Dropbox

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Dropbox
Developer(s)Dropbox, Inc.
Initial releaseSeptember 2008
Stable release
Windows, macOS, Linux197.4.7629 / April 25, 2024; 6 months ago (2024-04-25)[1]
Windows (Windows Store version)5.0 / March 27, 2017; 7 years ago (2017-03-27)[2]
Android374.2.4 / April 30, 2024; 6 months ago (2024-04-30)[3]
iOS374.2 / April 22, 2024; 6 months ago (2024-04-22)[4]
Preview release
Windows, macOS, Linux198.3.7576 / April 29, 2024; 6 months ago (2024-04-29)[5]
Android375.1.4 / April 30, 2024; 6 months ago (2024-04-30)[6]
Written inPython[citation needed]
Operating systemCross-platform
Available inEnglish, Japanese (beta), German (beta), Spanish (beta), and French (beta)[7]
TypeOnline backup service
LicenseClosed source (Windows & Mac clients and Linux dropbox daemon), GPL open source(Linux nautilus)
Websitewww.dropbox.com

Dropbox is a Web-based file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc. that uses cloud computing to enable users to store and share files and folders with others across the Internet using file synchronization. It was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi as a Y Combinator startup.[8]

There are both free and paid services, each with varying options.[9] In comparison to similar services, Dropbox offers a relatively large number of user clients across a variety of desktop and mobile operating systems. There are a total of 10 clients, including versions for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (official and unofficial[10]), as well as versions for mobile devices, such as Android, iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry, and a web-based client for when no local client is installed. Dropbox uses the Freemium financial model and its free service provides 2 GB of free online storage. Users who refer Dropbox to other can gain up to 10 GB of free storage.[11] The service's major competitors include Box.net, Sugarsync, Mozy, ZumoDrive[12][13] and SpiderOak.

History

As an MIT student, Drew Houston was inspired to create Dropbox out of his frustrations with forgetting his USB drive, and that existing services "suffered problems with Internet latency, large files, bugs, or just made me think too much." He began making something for himself, but then realized that it could benefit lots of people with the same problem.[14] Houston founded Dropbox, Inc. in 2007, and shortly thereafter secured seed funding from Y Combinator.[8] Dropbox officially launched at 2008's TechCrunch50, an annual technology conference.[15]

Due to trademark disputes between Evenflow (Dropbox's parent company) and Proxy, Inc., Dropbox's official domain name was actually "getdropbox.com" until October 2009, when they acquired their current domain, "dropbox.com", from the domain squatter its ownership was under.[15]

In 2009 Dropbox hired Adam Gross, a former Salesforce veteran, as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales.[16] Dropbox is based in San Francisco, and is funded by Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and Amidzad.[8] In January 2010 Dropbox had more than 4 million users.[16]

Starting in mid-2009, they began releasing new features gradually to help measure customer interest, a Lean Startup technique.[17]

Functionality

The Dropbox client enables users to drop any file into a designated folder that is then synced with Dropbox's Internet service and to any other of the user's computers and devices with the Dropbox client.[18] Users may also upload files manually through a web browser.[19] Through these usages, it can be an alternative to couriering physical removable media, and other traditional forms of file transfer, such as FTP and e-mail attachments.[20]

While Dropbox functions as a storage service, its focus is on synchronization and sharing. It supports revision history, so files deleted from the Dropbox folder may be recovered from any of the synced computers.[21][22] Dropbox's version control also helps users know the history of a file they may be currently working on, enabling more than one person to edit and re-post files without complications of losing its previous form.[23] The version history is limited to 30 days. A paid option for unlimited version history called "Pack-Rat" is available.[24]

The version history is paired with the use of delta encoding technology. To conserve bandwidth and time, if a file in a user's Dropbox folder is changed, Dropbox only uploads the pieces of the file that are changed when syncing.[25] Though the desktop client has no restriction on individual file size, files uploaded via the web site are limited to a maximum of 300 MB per file.[26] To prevent free users (who get 2 GB of free storage) from creating multiple free accounts, Dropbox includes the content of shared folders when totaling the amount of space used on the account.[27]

Dropbox uses Amazon's S3 storage system to store the files[28] and SoftLayer Technologies for its backend infrastructure; though Houston has stated that Dropbox may switch to a different storage provider at some point in the future.[29] It also uses SSL transfers for synchronization and stores the data via AES-256 encryption.[30]

Power users have devised a number of innovative uses for and mash-ups of the technology that expand Dropbox' functionality. These include: sending files to a Dropbox via Gmail; using Dropbox to sync IM chat logs; BitTorrent management; password management; remote application launching and system monitoring; and as a free Web hosting service.[31][32][33][34][35][36]

Add-Ons

There are a large number of unnoficial Dropbox addons that are available, mostly created by the Dropbox community. These addons are both in the form of web services such as SendToDropbox (which allows users to email files to their Dropboxes) and desktop applications such as MacDropAny (which allows users to sync any folder on their computer with Dropbox).

There are also a number of client applications for operating systems that Dropbox does not officially support, such as Maemo, Symbian, and Blackberry.

Dropbox has agreed to abide by the DMCA copyright guidelines and therefore it has dissuaded its users from uploading copyrighted content to Dropbox's servers. Dropbox has reserved the right to delete or remove any file from users' accounts if it violates the DMCA.[37] Dropbox also dissuades its users from uploading pornographic, racist, and defamatory content.[38]

Reception

Dropbox has been praised by many publications—including The Economist, The New York Times, PC Magazine, and The Washington Post—for its simple design and ease of use.[39][40][41][42] It has also received several awards by many web sites, including the Crunchie Award in 2009 for Best Internet Application; Macworld's 2009 Editor's Choice Award; and it has been nominated for a 2010 Webby Award, and for the 2010 Mac Design Awards by Ars Technica.[43][44][45][46]

Dropbox has been called one of the 20 best startups of Silicon Valley.[47]

Drew Houston of Dropbox was called the best young tech entrepreneur by Business Week.[48]

Dropbox has been criticized for not supporting the ability for users to use their own AES-256 keys, being unable to sync files that are in use or locked (although this has been fixed in the 0.8.x series of clients[49]), and for automatically signing in.[50][51]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Desktop client builds". dropboxforum.com. Retrieved 30 April 2024.
  2. ^ "Dropbox". Windows Store. Retrieved 27 March 2017.
  3. ^ "Dropbox". APKMirror. Retrieved 30 April 2024.
  4. ^ "‎Dropbox". App Store. Retrieved 30 April 2024.
  5. ^ "Beta Build 198.3.7576". dropboxforum.com. 29 April 2024. Retrieved 30 April 2024.
  6. ^ "Dropbox APKs". APKMirror. Retrieved 30 April 2024.
  7. ^ Web Beta for Japanese, German, Spanish, French
  8. ^ a b c "About Dropbox". Dropbox, Inc. Retrieved 22 April 2010. Dropbox was founded by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007, and received seed funding from Y Combinator.
  9. ^ "Official Dropbox Pricing Page". Retrieved 22 April 2010.
  10. ^ Official clients include 32- and 64-bit builds, and unofficial include the open source KDropbox, for the KDE desktop environment.
  11. ^ "How do I earn bonus space for referring friends to Dropbox?". The Dropbox Blog. Retrieved 3 March 2011.
  12. ^ Purdy, Kevin (17 October 2008). "Free Online Storage Feature-by-Feature Comparison Chart". Lifehacker. Retrieved 26 April 2010.
  13. ^ Chartier, David (5 February 2009). "Box.net takes online file storage collaborative, social". Ars Technica. Retrieved 22 April 2010. As a quick primer, Box.net is fundamentally similar to Dropbox, Windows Live SkyDrive, Apple's iDisk, and a wealth of online file storage competitors.
  14. ^ Ying, Jon (5 February 2009). "Meet the Team! (Part 1)". The Dropbox Blog. Dropbox, Inc. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
  15. ^ a b Kincaid, Jason (13 October 2009). "Dropbox Acquires The Domain Everyone Thought It Had: Dropbox.com". TechCrunch. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  16. ^ a b Wauters, Robin (20 January 2010). "Dropbox Announces 4 Million Users, Hires A VP From Salesforce". TechCrunch. Retrieved 26 April 2010. File sharing and synchronization service provider Dropbox this morning announced that it has passed the 4,000,000 user milestone.
  17. ^ Tam, Pui-Wing (20 May 2010). "Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 6 September 2010.
  18. ^ Ryan Paul. "How Dropbox ended my search for seamless sync on Linux". Ars Technica. Retrieved 24 September 2008.
  19. ^ Scott Dunn. "Dropbox File Sync Service". PC World. Retrieved 24 September 2008.
  20. ^ "writing tools dropbox". badlanguage.net. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  21. ^ "Can I undelete files and recover old versions of files?". Dropbox FAQ. Dropbox, Inc. Retrieved 1 January 2010.
  22. ^ Adam Pash. "Dropbox Syncs and Backs Up Files Between Computers Instantaneously". Lifehacker. Retrieved 22 September 2008.
  23. ^ Jason Snell. "Throw your stuff in Dropbox". Macworld. Retrieved 13 February 2009.
  24. ^ "What is Pack-Rat?". Dropbox. Retrieved 24 October 2009.
  25. ^ "Does Dropbox always upload/download the entire file any time a change is made?". Dropbox FAQ. Retrieved 9 February 2010. Before transferring a file, we compare the new file to the previous version and only send the piece of the file that changed.
  26. ^ "Is there a limit or maximum to how big my files can be?". Dropbox FAQ. Dropbox, Inc. Files uploaded to Dropbox via the desktop application have no file size limit. There is, however, a 300MB cap on files transferred via the website.
  27. ^ "Will joining someone else's shared folder use my quota?". Dropbox FAQ. Dropbox, Inc. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  28. ^ "Where are my files stored?". Dropbox FAQ. Dropbox, Inc. All files stored online by Dropbox are encrypted and kept securely on Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) in data centers located along the east coast of the United States.
  29. ^ Drager, Dave (17 March 2010). "DropBox : Review, Invites, and 7 Questions with the Founder". MakeUseOf.com. Retrieved 7 May 2010. We may not be on s3 forever, and will build our own store in addition, but for now this lets us focus on both the client software and the performance of the layer we've developed on top of s3.
  30. ^ "Dropbox Features". Retrieved 1 January 2010.
  31. ^ Alex Castle. "15 Hacks Every Dropbox User Should Know". Maximum PC. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  32. ^ "15 Advanced Dropbox Hacks". StoreCrowd. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  33. ^ Pash, Adam (14 October 2008). "How to Use Dropbox as the Ultimate Password Syncer". LifeHacker. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
  34. ^ Gordon, Whitson (25 May 2010). "Launch Applications Remotely with Dropbox and AutoHotkey". LifeHacker. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
  35. ^ Ho, Erica (18 May 2010). "Use Dropbox to Monitor Your Computer Remotely". LifeHacker. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
  36. ^ tehdavid (30 April 2010). "Use Dropbox to Share and Host Your Web Site". LifeHacker. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
  37. ^ "Dropbox DMCA Policy". Dropbox, Inc. Retrieved 26 April 2010. Upon receipt of Notice as described below, Dropbox will take whatever action, in its sole discretion, it deems appropriate, including removal of the challenged content from the Site.
  38. ^ "Dropbox Terms of Service". Dropbox, Inc. Retrieved 26 April 2010.
  39. ^ "There's room yet in the cloud". The Economist. August 24 2010. Retrieved 2010-10-12. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  40. ^ Eisenberg, Anne (18 January 2009). "Digital Storage Options for Workers on the Go". The New York Times. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  41. ^ Dunn, Scott (1 August 2008). "Dropbox File Sync Service". The Washington Post. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  42. ^ Mendelson, Edward (25 March 2009). "Dropbox". PC World. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  43. ^ Kincaid, Jason (8 January 2010). "Congratulations Crunchies Winners! Facebook Takes Best Overall For The Hat Trick". TechCrunch. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  44. ^ "25th annual Editors' Choice Awards: the complete list". Macworld. 10 December 2009. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  45. ^ "14th Annual Webby Awards Nominees". International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
  46. ^ Foresman, Chris (25 May 2010). "Reader's Choice poll for 2010 Ars Design Awards: Mac OS X". Ars Technica. Retrieved 27 May 2010.
  47. ^ "Silicon Valley Startups". Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  48. ^ "Drew Houston". Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  49. ^ "(7/22) - Latest Forum Build - 0.8.90".
  50. ^ "Dropbox Review". BestOnlineBackupDeals.com. Retrieved 15 April 2010.
  51. ^ "Thoughts on Dropbox". Paul Stamatiou. Retrieved 15 April 2010.

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