How Not to Get Boxed in by Apple and Google

Dropxbox is a great story about how a little company has taken on the giants with the likes of Apple, Google, and Microsoft.  Although we have never personally used Dropbox we did lay out in this post How To Choose The Best Cloud For Your Data the various options you have for storing your content online.

What seems to make Dropbox unique and sets it apart from its competition, is the fact that it can work across many different platforms such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft.  People have have various files stored across the online plain but with Dropox you can access all the different file formats in one place.

Our personally preference is still to use SkyDrive by Microsoft simply because most of the files that we use come from the Microsoft Office Suite.

If readers have any opinion regarding any of the online options we would love to hear about what you have to say.

Full WSJ article here

• Dropbox acts like a digital locker in which users can upload and store their files and photos from one computing device, say their work PC, and then access them from other devices, for instance their Mac at home or an Android smartphone on the go.
• Yet many consumers prefer to "bring their own device" to various aspects of their digital lives, a trend that has forced companies to support the iPads and iPhones that employees often bring to work. Similarly, many may also prefer to "bring their own locker" when it comes to online storage. That is because they want one that works with various platforms.
• As a private company, Dropbox doesn't release financials, so it isn't clear how many of its 100 million users actually pay for its service. They can get two gigabytes of online storage free.
• Mr. Houston says that Dropbox is profitable and that it hasn't spent any of the $250 million it raised a year ago in a financing round that valued the company at a tidy $4 billion. He says the company raised the money to be more flexible.