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RUMOR: Apple offered $800 million For Dropbox

Friday, September 9, 2011 · 3:23 pm · 29 Comments

“Before file-storage-on-the-Internet service Dropbox raised a huge round at a $4 billion valuation, it underwent an M&A process,” Nicholas Carlson reports for The Business Insider.

“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,” Carlson reports. “Apple, we’re told, eventually offered $800 million.”

Carlson reports, “Dropbox passed.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Dan K." for the heads up.]

Categories: Rumor

Tags: Apple Inc., Dropbox, M&A, rumor

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Comment Feed

29 Comments

MM

Friday, September 9, 2011 - 3:43 pm · Reply

Wouldn’t like Apple to get its hands on Dropbox. It’s best if Dropbox remains cross-platform with Apple’s monopolistic attitude. In that respect, Apple needs to be treated with as much suspicion now as Microsoft used to be during its heyday of the late 90s and early 2000′s.
- Predrag
  
  Friday, September 9, 2011 - 4:03 pm · Reply
  
  Why? What exactly are they doing here that falls under illegal abuse of a monopoly to prevent competition? Where do they HAVE monopoly, to begin with?
  - W.T.Effyall
    
    Friday, September 9, 2011 - 4:21 pm · Reply
    
    What other company has every been dismissed for low market share, and denounced as monopolistic, simultaneously?
    
    Greatly insane!
    - W.T.Effyall
      
      Friday, September 9, 2011 - 4:23 pm · Reply
      
      (make that “ever” instead of “every”)
    - paul
      
      Friday, September 9, 2011 - 4:42 pm · Reply
      
      So true….so true. Greatly insane indeed.
      
      To top it all, all this dissing is by AMERICAN media and AMERICAN idiot-doofus-redneck-types that like “open” android……without having the smallest inkling or comprehension of what “open” in this context actually means. Talk about shooting ones own foot.
      - heathen
        
        Friday, September 9, 2011 - 5:25 pm · Reply
        
        Not too many Google and Android worshipping rednecks, in fact that company spends a lot of time and money cozying up to Democrats, the President even has some of them working directly under him. So now that your initial premise is completely torpedoed, let’s go for the lightning round…
        
        The majority of American media swings left, the largest minority swings right. There aren’t many media empires based in Memphis or Nashville, try NYC where there’s only one guy wearing a cowboy hat, and he’s usually in Times Square in his undies.
        
        So little ‘p’ Paul, since you’ve parroted Team rhetoric, you get a peanut for approxamating speech. However I must remind, that you’re only perched about 4-8 inches away from your repeatedly soiled newspaper cage lining.
        
        Macronaut
        
        Friday, September 9, 2011 - 5:30 pm · Reply
        
        (Snap!)
        
        Heroin
        
        Friday, September 9, 2011 - 8:40 pm · Reply
        
        Well considering the mayors of Nashville and Memphis are both Democrats, and the mayor of New York is a Republican-turned-Independent, your simplistic reasoning doesn’t hold up.
        
        Paul
        
        Saturday, September 10, 2011 - 3:00 am · Reply
        
        Actually it is sometimes “paul” and sometimes “Paul”. I don’t bother correcting autofill.
        
        Your 1st paragraph makes no sense at all. Come to think of it nor does any other paragraph. 3rd paragraph is totally hilarious…..for example what’s with capital T in Team? Is it supposed to mean something? What does “approximating speech” mean? Too weird….anyway don’t want to know and don’t care what an idiot like you has to say.
        
        In fact, you heathen with a small “h” is exactly the doofus I had in mind. Come on! you gonna tell me you are not one these doofus red necks that I was referring to? You sound just like one. And I bet you are unemployed as well. Am I right? I know I am.
- Petey
  
  Friday, September 9, 2011 - 4:11 pm · Reply
  
  Oh yer… And google aint?
  
  Makes me laugh all those google idiots thinking it’s such a great company.
  
  Google don’t give a fig about anything other than stealing as much innovation as possible and of course everyone’s person information so they can flog it to advertisers for a premium price.
  
  You wanna look at google for a monopoly and closed Market.
  
  Biggest problem with google – they have no ideas or decency
- paul
  
  Friday, September 9, 2011 - 4:27 pm · Reply
  
  Apple has no monopoly any anything. However, in a scenario (with SJ in charge either as CEO OR COB) where they have a monopoly on something, there is no company worthy of having a monopoly…..BECAUSE even as a monopoly they would still behave as if they had none. With SJ gone, however, I don’t know if I would go that far, but they STILL would be preferable over any other company.
  - Applesmack
    
    Sunday, September 11, 2011 - 12:25 am · Reply
    
    @paul
    Actually, Apple seems to have a monopoly on the kind of vision creativity, capability and thinking that produces, new exciting, well designed and exceptional products with supply chain management capable of world wide distribution.
- Bizlaw
  
  Friday, September 9, 2011 - 5:02 pm · Reply
  
  I seriously doubt Apple would have made Dropbox Mac-only. The existing Dropbox has many, many users which are obviously driving a great deal of revenue to Dropbox, and there would be no compelling business reason to buy Dropbox just to cut out those non-Mac users.
- FalKirk
  
  Friday, September 9, 2011 - 8:48 pm · Reply
  
  Monopolistic? You mean like the way iTunes and iCloud work on Microsoft Windows?
  - kingmel
    
    Friday, September 9, 2011 - 11:51 pm · Reply
    
    Or the way various Microsoft products work in OS X???
    …Sort of work (e.g., Office, SharePoint)?
    …Used to work (Project)?
    …Never worked (Access)?
- HUYA™
  
  Saturday, September 10, 2011 - 4:21 am · Reply
  
  Horse hooey!
Splat

Friday, September 9, 2011 - 4:02 pm · Reply

I find DropBox limited and not as easy as it should be to use. I should be able to run multiply dropboxes on the same desktop. A feature DB lacked the last time I looked. Apple isn’t perfect and I wish they would hurry up with iCloud but Apple is pretty easy to use.
- mango
  
  Friday, September 9, 2011 - 4:48 pm · Reply
  
  I’ve been using Sugarsync over Dropbox lately. Dropbox is more like iDisk, except faster… way faster. Sugarsync let you choose what folder(s) to sync (Desktop Folder, Documents, etc). However, I have noticed a few quirks on setup.
  
  I don’t think iCloud will resemble dropbox at all.
Hotinplaya

Friday, September 9, 2011 - 4:03 pm · Reply

It would remain cross platform, way for people to access their files on IOS from their PC, Mac
WaterFalls

Friday, September 9, 2011 - 5:23 pm · Reply

APPLEs iDISK — is that basically the same as DROPBOX?

I am sure there are more services in DROPBOX by now.

THESE merely are virtual HARD DRIVES in the cloud – what gives – why pay 800 million when we CAN BUILD our OWN!
- btaylor
  
  Friday, September 9, 2011 - 5:40 pm · Reply
  
  uuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmApple did build their own and it was the height of SUCKASSOCITY!!!!!!!!! iDisk.!.Pffft! !!
  
  Infrastructure and capital don’t always add up to good product—-Design (and you’d think if any company new that it would be Apple) usability and consistency were the missing ingredients with iDisc.
Fatal

Friday, September 9, 2011 - 5:44 pm · Reply

If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em!
- Fred
  
  Saturday, September 10, 2011 - 11:48 pm · Reply
  
  Or retreat.
MacDoc

Friday, September 9, 2011 - 5:50 pm · Reply

come on Apple if you want it youcan get it for half of that price! Too late now…
patranus

Friday, September 9, 2011 - 6:16 pm · Reply

What patents does drop box own that prevents Apple from implementing similar services?

None you say?

Then what would be the point of the purchase.

Market share? Apple has the branding to generate their own.
Technology? Probably take 6-9 months and $500,000-$750,000 for Apple engineers to produce a beta.

Its not like Drop Box is doing anything that requires anything special therefore, such an acquisition would be relatively pointless.
Jubei

Friday, September 9, 2011 - 7:27 pm · Reply

Rumor. I call BS on this one.
KenC

Saturday, September 10, 2011 - 12:33 am · Reply

Apple, reportedly offered 8x sales, and VCs gave Dropbox money to put a book value on them 40x sales. For comparison people believe Apple is overvalued at just 3.5x sales. Sure, Dropbox is small and presumably growing fast, but Apple is a pretty fast grower too!
Tacitus

Saturday, September 10, 2011 - 9:49 am · Reply

@Mango: “Sugarsync let you choose what folder(s) to sync (Desktop Folder, Documents, etc)”.

If you look at the Wiki on the Dropbox site, there’s enough details and a couple of nifty applications (MacDropAny & DropLink) for creating symlinks to enable you to sync any folder via Dropbox
Mike

Saturday, September 10, 2011 - 12:58 pm · Reply

If dropbox has no special tech behind it, how come it’s 10x faster than iDisc — especially when dealing with large numbers of very small files?

I tried to back up a 409MB folder with 5,000 tiny Word files. iDisc took something like 8 HOURS to handle it. Dropbox took less than an hour…

Go figure…