I always liked the file syncing part of Dropbox, and was considering their Family plan a few years back, until they increased the prices. If I remember correctly, their reasoning included all the additional features like Paper which you would get but that I never needed. It's currently at 203 EUR/year here - pretty steep if you only care about the core usecase of syncing files.

They have a super fast and slick file storage app. Some of the features that are natural additions to that feature set work quite well, like document scanning. But so much of what Dropbox does seems like they can't stay put and be happy with their core offering. Of course, they have to do this to increase revenue, for fear of becoming a mere commodity. It's tough.

We were among the first Paper users (starting from the private beta). We loved the product for the first few years, but then it stagnated. We finally switched away from it a year and a half ago.

Their export feature has been broken for over a year. Support hasn't helped, and our data is still trapped.

A sad end for a once promising product.

Well, saw that coming and too bad because for a moment and before notion took off, it had a chance. I gave up using it when critical notes I wrote in offline mode in the subway did not sync as I was lead to believe. Never touched it again.

Dropbox Paper was the best Notepad-like app in the market, only to Dropbox to completely stop developing it almost immediately and then eventually making it worse by making it Dropbox-backed and now killing the app. It's a shame really.

It's one thing to discontinue something - is there a reason it's not open sources it for the users that prefer to use it?

It's odd that every software must sufficiently be for everyone, or bust.

It's so strange that a company designed around syncing files created the .paper format which only stores a URL, and no actual content. It could have been a great Markdown client.

Oh no, anyway

Good. I wish they'd stop adding new "apps" I don't want, and focus on being a handy little file sync and sharing solution. Some of my own pet peeves they did:

- got rid of Public folder support, in spite of user outcry (https://www.dropboxforum.com/discussions/101001014/ending-su...)

- re-wrote the software in such a way that files are temporarily locked right after they get written / modified (intermittently breaking utilities like VSO Image Resizer)

- made it increasingly difficult or impossible to deliberately remove the green checkmark overlay icons (used to be an easy Windows registry hack, now the software goes through all kinds of hoops to fight you and restore the way they want it)

- IIRC for a while they introduced AI feature default settings that would hoover up your document contents without consent (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/12/dropb...)

HN saw the birth of Dropbox; I hope we don't see the death of it here.