Exactly, thank you. I wasn't FWIW one of the folks on HN who responded to Dropbox with "but rsync...". (And I was on HN when it debuted!) I did express concern about the privacy and security implications of storing sensitive information with them, and if I remember right, they did have a partial breach early on.
But, they handled it well and they've never screwed over their users and they have partially resolved the long-standing file transfer problem (https://xkcd.com/949/).
So I still have those concerns, but overall it's a great service and I've recommended it to a few folks over the years.
It helps also that there are some open alternatives on the scene now, so if you make Dropbox some critical part of your infrastructure, it's feasible to switch to something else if Dropbox suddenly decides they want to focus only on the smartphone market.
Slack had the ease-of-use and feature advantages -- which I acknowledged -- but it was too young and there were no open alternatives that matched it feature-for-feature. That made it dangerous to rely on too much. i.e., I'd still use it, but I wouldn't make it the de facto communication system for a company.
But, they handled it well and they've never screwed over their users and they have partially resolved the long-standing file transfer problem (https://xkcd.com/949/).
So I still have those concerns, but overall it's a great service and I've recommended it to a few folks over the years.
It helps also that there are some open alternatives on the scene now, so if you make Dropbox some critical part of your infrastructure, it's feasible to switch to something else if Dropbox suddenly decides they want to focus only on the smartphone market.
Slack had the ease-of-use and feature advantages -- which I acknowledged -- but it was too young and there were no open alternatives that matched it feature-for-feature. That made it dangerous to rely on too much. i.e., I'd still use it, but I wouldn't make it the de facto communication system for a company.