Hmm.. that seemed like perfectly reasonable criticism to me, the kind that informed the founder of the gulf between users' current understanding and the level they'd need to see the value in the product (i.e. very useful to a founder).
But I guess looking back now it's easy to view it with levity; it could have felt extremely harsh at the time (although Drew does manage a few smiley emojis throughout his answer so he seemed to have taken it well).
It's not infamous because the skepticism of dropbox was wrong (though it obviously was...)
It's infamous because Drew made a point of coming back as a billionaire to call out and shame brandonm; something that seemed unnecessarily petty when you're holding a billion dollars.
No, it is infamous precisely because people, especially developers, on HN discount the value of good user experience. No one but the most technical will set up their own FTP server to rsync files back and forth, but they will drag and drop files into a folder that "magically" syncs. To say it more flippantly, this is why Drew is a billionaire and BrandonM is not.
IMHO this is the difference between real innovation and productization. The invention of the transistor is a real innovation, the transistor radio is a mere product. That's not to say products don't have value, but they're just... not as impressive to me.
Nothing that Dropbox does (or did? is it still around?) is technically innovative. I guess it's nice for that rich guy that he identified a user-friendly box that people would pay for.
Sure, but the company that made the transistor radio (and not necessarily even made it, but the one that made the best version of it), Sony, is now rich, while the organization that made the transistor, Bell Labs, is now essentially defunct.
> Nothing that Dropbox does (or did? is it still around?) is technically innovative. I guess it's nice for that rich guy that he identified a user-friendly box that people would pay for.
Technology is a tool for people, there is no value to technology (and it doesn't matter how "innovate" it is) if people don't use it.
> To say it more flippantly, this is why Drew is a billionaire and BrandonM is not
Seems a bit mean-spirited, and I'm not sure I like the implied value assumptions. I expect there are other important reasons as well including connections, timing, luck, etc.
I was just mentioning it in the same spirit as the parent comment. It's not about "billionaires bullying" at all but the fundamental disconnect engineers often have to user experience.
Honest criticism is undervalued. I think the zedshaw take isn't exactly wrong either.
Seems to be a slightly different category from CmdrTaco's infamous take on the iPod ('No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame') but that wasn't entirely wrong either.
I'm not quite as critical of HN, but I concur that allowing deletion whenever would be a positive change.
Was HN overly critical of Dropbox? If so, how so? (genuinely curious)
I did some digging and found some interesting sources but didn't come across anything overly critical of Dropbox in its early years (yet):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dhouston
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1253750400&dateRange=custom&...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR7tJ8wAI3M&t=27s