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Timeline of Dropbox

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This is a timeline of online file storage and collaboration service Dropbox.

Full timeline[edit]

Year Month and date Event type Details
2005 Competition Box.com, an online file sharing and content management service for businesses, is launched. It IPOs in March 2014.[1]
2007 June 1 Company Dropbox is founded by MIT students Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, as a startup company from the American seed accelerator Y Combinator.[2]
2007 August Competition Microsoft launches Windows Live SkyDrive (later OneDrive), which also provides users with free storage.[3]
2007 December Competition SpiderOak – an online backup and file hosting service that allows users to access, synchronize and share data using a cloud-based server – is launched.
2008 March Product Dropbox creates a 3-minute video demonstration of its technology as it is meant to work, which is posted to Digg.[4] This helped its beta waiting list expand from 5,000 people to 75,000 people literally overnight.[5]
2008 September 11 Product Dropbox launches to the public, allowing anyone to get 2 GB of free storage. It also announces storage pricing tiers, with 50 GB Dropbox for $9.99/month, or $99.99/year.[6]
2009 October Product Dropbox acquires the dropbox.com domain for $300,000 in cash.[7]
2009 December Acquisitions Steve Jobs approaches Drew Houston and suggests that Drew Houston sell Dropbox. Drew Houston cuts the pitch short and says that Dropbox is determined to stay independent.[8]
2010 May International Dropbox announces that it has been blocked by the Chinese government.[9][10][11][12][13]
2011 June Security TechCrunch reports that all Dropbox accounts could be accessed without password for four hours. This was later widely reported in the mainstream press and caused some doubt about Dropbox's "cloud" technology model.[14] The error was caused by an authentication code update.[15]
2012 February Acquisitions Dropbox acquires stealth startup Cove.[16]
2012 April Product Dropbox announces a new feature allowing users to automatically upload photographs or videos from camera, tablet, SD card, or smartphone. Users will be given up to 3 GB (initially 5 GB) extra space to accommodate the photographs and videos uploaded in this fashion, but the space is permanently added to the user's allowance and is not restricted to pictures. It is viewed as a move against Google's recently launched Google Drive and Microsoft's OneDrive.[17]
2012 November 12 Userbase Dropbox announces it reaches 100 million users.[18]
2012 December International Dropbox announces plans to establish its first international office in Dublin, Ireland.[19]
2012 December 19 Acquisitions Dropbox acquires Snapjoy, which provides a service for aggregating, archiving and viewing all digital photographs taken with cameras, phones, or popular photo applications.[citation needed]
2013 March Acquisitions Dropbox acquires Mailbox, a sleek email platform specifically for mobile users.[20]
2013 June 6 Security The Guardian and The Washington Post publicize confidential documents suggesting Dropbox was being considered for inclusion in the National Security Agency's classified PRISM program of Internet surveillance.[21][22]
2013 November 13 Userbase Dropbox announces it reaches 200 million users.[citation needed]
2013 November 13 Product Dropbox announces it will unveil Dropbox for businesses.[23]
2014 February Team Dropbox hires Dennis Woodside, who ran Motorola Mobility for Google, as its chief operating officer.[24][25]
2014 April 17 Acquisitions Dropbox acquires Hackpad, a real-time collaborative text editor.[26][27]
2014 November 4 Competition Dropbox announces a partnership with Microsoft to integrate Dropbox and Microsoft Office applications on iOS, Android and the Office 365 applications on the web.[28][29][30]
2014 December Product Dropbox announces that it will open up its API to business software developers – offering a new set of tools to help integrate Dropbox’s file storage and security features with other business software.[31]
2015 February Partnerships Dropbox partners with Vodafone, a British multinational telecommunications company, to offer file storage to Vodafone's 400 million wireless customers.[32]
2015 August 12 Product Dropbox announces availability of its USB security key which provides two-factor authentication to its services.[33]
2015 October 15 Product Dropbox rebrands its six-month-old product invite-only beta product Notes as Dropbox Paper, and expands the beta significantly. The product, that facilitates collaborative document editing, is available only on the web at this time.[34][35]
2015 December Product Dropbox announces it will shutter its free mobile apps Mailbox and Carousel as it focuses more on paid file storage by businesses.[36]
2016 March Product, Competition Dropbox announces that it now stores over 90% of its user data on its own infrastructure stack as it moves away from Amazon S3.[37][38][39]
2016 June 14 Financial Dropbox CEO Drew Houston announces that the company is free cash flow positive, but is not in a rush to IPO. Commentators note that this does not imply that the company is profitable, since free cash flow does not include a number of expenses.[40]
2016 August 3 Product Dropbox launches an iPhone and Android version of its document-editing app, Paper, and upgrades it from invite-only beta to open beta.[41]
2016 November 16 Product As part of its AdminX initiative for Dropbox Business users, Dropbox launches additional features to improve security of business documents and prevent people from accessing them through personal accounts. Admin controls are extended to Dropbox Paper. Also, Dropbox announces an infrastructure expansion in Europe and Asia, to cater to its large non-US audience. As of this date, Dropbox has more than 30 security partnerships across areas such as data loss prevention, enterprise mobility management, identity and access management, data migration, eDiscovery, and analytics.[42][43]
2017 June 19 Product Dropbox announces plans to further grow its worldwide private network in North America, Europe, and Australia by introducing five new regional accelerators. This move aims to enhance performance and reliability for all its users around the world.[44]
2018 February 15 Financial Dropbox launches the Dropbox Foundation, which focuses on promoting and protecting human rights by partnering with impactful nonprofits.[45]
2018 March Financial Dropbox has successfully secured $756 million for its IPO, with 36 million shares priced at $21 each.[46]
2018 November 6 Product Dropbox announces Dropbox Extensions, which allow users to initiate workflows directly within Dropbox, e.g. the ability to edit PDFs, to view and edit DWGs, to annotate videos or to send electronic fax.[47]
2019 January 28 Acquisitions Dropbox announces its acquisition of e-signature software company HelloSign for $230 million.[48]
2019 May Product Dropbox announces Rewind, a new feature that can roll back an account to any point in the past 30 days.[49]
2020 October 13 Team Dropbox is from now on becoming a remote-first company.[50]
2021 March 9 Acquisitions Dropbox announces its acquisition of document sharing startup DocSend for $165 million.[51]
2021 October 29 Acquisitions Dropbox announces that an agreement to acquire universal search company Command E has been signed.[52]
2022 November 29 Acquisitions Dropbox announces that an agreement to acquire several key assets from Boxcryptor has been signed. Boxcryptor is a provider of end-to-end zero-knowledge encryption for cloud storage services.[53]
2022 December 16 Acquisitions Dropbox announces the acquisition of form management platform FormSwift for $95 million.[54]
2023 June 21 Financial Dropbox launches Dropbox Ventures, a $50 million venture fund focused on startups in the AI space.[55]
2023 June 21 Product Dropbox announces Dash, an AI-powered universal search, and Dropbox AI, which uses generative AI to answer questions and summarize large files.[56]
2023 October 10 Product Dropbox announces Dropbox Studio, a video collaboration tool, that can be used to create, edit, review and publish videos.[57]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Box, Dropbox and Hightail Pivot to New Business Models". The New York Times. August 24, 2014. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  2. ^ "About Dropbox". Dropbox, Inc. Retrieved June 3, 2013. Dropbox was founded by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007, and received seed funding from Y Combinator.
  3. ^ "Introducing Windows Live SkyDrive! – Windows Live". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on December 26, 2009. Retrieved April 20, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  4. ^ "Digg – Google Drive killer coming from MIT Startup". Digg. Archived from the original on March 14, 2008. Retrieved April 20, 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  5. ^ "Finding Your Way as an Entrepreneur [Entire Talk] | Stanford eCorner". Stanford eCorner. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
  6. ^ "Dropbox launches to the public!". Retrieved April 20, 2016.
  7. ^ Houston, Drew. "(01:15:50 ~ 01:24:20) Clip of #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox". Listen Notes.
  8. ^ Victoria Barret (October 18, 2011). "Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup". Forbes. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
  9. ^ "dropbox banned". techwhack. Archived from the original on February 19, 2014. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
  10. ^ "dropbox blocked". neowin. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
  11. ^ "dropbox blocked". geek.com. Archived from the original on April 16, 2013. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
  12. ^ "dropbox blocked". shanghaiist. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
  13. ^ "Dropbox Blocked in China". mingtiandi. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
  14. ^ "Dropbox's password nightmare highlights cloud risks". CNN. June 22, 2011. Any trust in the cloud is too much trust in the cloud – it's as simple as that
  15. ^ "Dropbox confirms security glitch—no password required".
  16. ^ "Dropbox May Have Just Acqui-Hired A New CTO – Business Insider". Businessinsider.com. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
  17. ^ "Dropbox Gets Automatic Photo Uploads, Offers 3 GB Incentive". TIME. April 27, 2012. Retrieved April 30, 2012.
  18. ^ By Victoria Barret, Forbes. "Dropbox Hits 100 Million Users Says Drew Houston." November 11, 2013. December 2, 2013.
  19. ^ "Dropbox Picks Dublin for Its Second Office – Liz Gannes – News – AllThingsD". Allthingsd.com. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
  20. ^ "Dropbox has acquired Mailbox, TapEngage, Endorse, Foundry Hiring, Sold, Zulip, Readmill, HackPad, Loom". Upstart.bizjournals.com. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  21. ^ Greenwald, Glenn (June 6, 2013). "NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data, secret files reveal". The Guardian. London. Retrieved June 7, 2013.
  22. ^ Gellman, Barton (June 6, 2013). "Documents: U.S. mining data from 9 leading Internet firms; companies deny knowledge". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 7, 2013.
  23. ^ "Dropbox Aims at Business". The New York Times. November 13, 2013. Retrieved August 27, 2016.
  24. ^ "Dropbox hires first COO amid Google divestiture – Fortune". Fortune.com. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
  25. ^ "Dropbox COO Dennis Woodside profile – Business Insider". Businessinsider.com. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
  26. ^ Mike Billings (April 17, 2014). "Dropbox Acquires Startups Loom, Hackpad in Push to Expand Services". WSJ.
  27. ^ "Hackpad is teaming up with Dropbox!". hackpad.com. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
  28. ^ "We're partnering with Microsoft". Dropbox. November 4, 2014.
  29. ^ "Dropbox and Microsoft form surprise partnership for Office integration". theverge.com. November 4, 2014.
  30. ^ Bass, Dina (November 4, 2014). "Microsoft Teams Up With Dropbox to Target Mobile, Business Users". bloomberg.com.
  31. ^ "Dropbox Opens Up to Business Software Developers – Digits". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 27, 2016.
  32. ^ "Dropbox Taps Vodafone for International Growth – Digits". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 27, 2016.
  33. ^ "DropBox Adds USB Security Key Protection". Geek Inspector. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
  34. ^ "Paper is Dropbox's new vision for how teams can work together". Engadget. October 15, 2015. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  35. ^ Newton, Casey (October 15, 2015). "Hands on with Paper, Dropbox's answer to Google Docs. Slick editing and rich media, but is it enough?". The Verge. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  36. ^ "Dropbox Is Pulling 'Mailbox' and 'Carousel' Apps – Digits". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 27, 2016.
  37. ^ "Scaling to exabytes and beyond". Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  38. ^ Babcock, Charles (June 1, 2016). "How Dropbox Moved 500PB Of Customer Files Off AWS. With 500 petabytes of customer files to manage, Dropbox decided to become a post-cloud company. That meant moving a core operation off AWS. Here's how it was done". InformationWeek. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  39. ^ Metz, Cade (March 14, 2016). "The Epic Story of Dropbox's Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire". Wired Magazine. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  40. ^ Kim, Eugene (June 14, 2016). "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston just shared something Wall Street is really going to like". Business Insider. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  41. ^ Ingraham, Nathan (August 3, 2016). "Paper, Dropbox's answer to Google Docs, now has apps for iOS and Android. The service is now in open beta, too, so give it a shot". Engadget. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  42. ^ Baesman, Rob (November 16, 2016). "Introducing enhancements to AdminX, Paper, and our infrastructure". Dropbox. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  43. ^ Kriel, Collen (November 24, 2016). "Dropbox Business gets additional enterprise security, admin controls, more". Silicon Angle. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  44. ^ "Dropbox Expands Global Private Network to Accelerate Sync Speeds for Users". blog.dropbox.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  45. ^ "Announcing the Dropbox Foundation". blog.dropbox.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  46. ^ "Dropbox IPO Prices Shares At 21 Apiece, Above Expected Range". Investor's Business Daily. March 22, 2018. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  47. ^ "Announcing Dropbox Extensions with strategic and category-leading partners". blog.dropbox.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  48. ^ "Dropbox Drops $230 Million on HelloSign". Yahoo Finance. January 29, 2019. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  49. ^ "Dropbox Rewind Lets You Recover Files With Ease". experience.dropbox.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  50. ^ "Dropbox goes Virtual First". blog.dropbox.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  51. ^ "Dropbox to Acquire DocSend". Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  52. ^ "Welcome Command E to Dropbox!". blog.dropbox.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  53. ^ "Dropbox to acquire Boxcryptor assets, bring end-to-end encryption to business users". blog.dropbox.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  54. ^ Singh, Meghavi (December 16, 2022). "Dropbox acquires FormSwift for $95M in cash (NASDAQ:DBX) | Seeking Alpha". seekingalpha.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  55. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (June 21, 2023). "Dropbox launches $50M AI-focused venture fund, intros AI features". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  56. ^ "Introducing Dropbox Dash, AI-powered universal search, and Dropbox AI". blog.dropbox.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
  57. ^ "Introducing new tools for the next generation of knowledge work". blog.dropbox.com. Retrieved June 9, 2024.
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