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Dropbox May Have Declined $800 Million Acquisition Offer from Apple

Friday September 9, 2011 9:26 am PDT by Eric Slivka

Business Insider files this report under "gossip", but says that it has heard from a pair of second-hand sources that Apple bid up to $800 million for file storage and sharing service Dropbox, but Dropbox passed on the deal to remain independent. The company has since raised a new round of funding at a $4 billion valuation.

Enterprise software-as-a-service company Citrix and Apple took a long look at Dropbox's books.

They saw that Dropbox revenues would reach $100 million this year.

Apple, we're told, eventually offered $800 million.

Dropbox has been extremely popular with users, offering clients for a host of platforms that allow users to easily access their files via the cloud from nearly anywhere. The service provides 2 GB of free storage for users, with paid upgrades to 50 GB and 100 GB available. The company has also rolled out "Teams" packages to allow groups to take advantage of the storage and sharing functionality with shared quotas and centralized billing.
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killerrobot
24 weeks ago
Good for Dropbox "supposedly" not accepting the buyout. I'm a little sick of MS, Apple and Google buying up all the competition. It's really bad for innovation.
Rating: 18 Positives / 6 Negatives
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0815
24 weeks ago
Thats what I always said: If apple wants to make iDisk useful they need to purchase DropBox ... too bad it didn't work out. I love dropbox - best way to combine the advantages of the 'cloud' with the advantage of local storage.
Rating: 13 Positives / 2 Negatives
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nrose101
24 weeks ago
I love dropbox. I have been using since the year they came out and can't image living without them today. I am glad they have created a model where they can stay profitable and in business.
Rating: 9 Positives / 1 Negatives
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samcraig
24 weeks ago
I'm glad DropBox didn't sell. Nothing more to say since the reasons are obvious.
Rating: 8 Positives / 2 Negatives
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skellener
24 weeks ago
Actually I'm very happy Apple didn't buy Dropbox. Dropbox already works great with the Mac and iOS devices and apps and even the web. But it also works cross platform should you need that on Windows at some point. Dropbox out did iDisk a long time ago. Apple's iCloud is more of a catch up. By not being purchased by Apple, I think Dropbox has a bright future. Sometimes being a third party is better.:)
Rating: 5 Positives / 0 Negatives
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Vitruviux
24 weeks ago
Good! I want DropBox to remain neutral.

You know once Apple purchased it, they'd limit it only for their products.
Rating: 4 Positives / 0 Negatives
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benpatient
24 weeks ago

I don't understand what the big deal is with "cloud storage". If I want to store stuff I put it on an external drive.

If I want access to it on the road I bring a $20 thumb drive.


you plug a thumb drive into your cell phone?

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Dropbox used to be good. But I think it's now too big for it's own good without enough scaling and the network is now slow as molasses.


Funny, I uploaded a 200MB file just about 10 minutes ago (completely new file, not something they could have on their servers already) in 2 minutes.

It was on my laptop, wirelessly, 2 minutes after that.

How fast is it supposed to be, really?
Rating: 5 Positives / 1 Negatives
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0815
24 weeks ago

THANK GOD FOR THAT!!!

And what would be the point in apple buying a service that it is discontinuing... iDisc ... I've just spent time moving all my files over to Dropbox, ready to get used to not having mobile

What were they going to do...buy it and discontinue that as well?!!


Big difference between iDisk and dropbox: iDisk was a mess, horrible slow and just done the wrong way. Dropbox on the other hand is well done, works smooth is fast. I used iDisk for a month or so and decided it is unusable - I am paying for dropbox (lots of money for the 350 GB Team account) and it is worth every penny.

Apple did not discontinue a service like dropbox - they discontinued a FAILED product that does not come even close to the functionality of dropbox.

It was a good decision from Apple to discontinue iDisk and it would have been even better to replace it with something that is more like dropbox.
Rating: 5 Positives / 1 Negatives
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jayhawk11
24 weeks ago
That would have been an interesting addition to the iCloud team.
Rating: 5 Positives / 1 Negatives
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chelsel
24 weeks ago
Dropbox solved this problem for me http://xkcd.com/949/

The ability to drag a file to my Dropbox and share a link to that file is perhaps the single most useful thing about the service. Storing files remotely has been done previously, but making it easy to share the file was never done correctly.

The other thing Dropbox has in its favor is ubiquity.
Rating: 3 Positives / 0 Negatives

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