Returning for just a bit to our discussion earlier about Mozilla’s big opportunity to be the trusted, neutral, privacy-first custodian of data in the 21st century. It seems increasingly like Dropbox sees itself as that custodian. [1] It recently released a set of features that points towards that positioning:
- a password manager
- support for encrypted files/folders – though in beta at the time of this writing
- automated backup of common folders – Desktop, Documents and Downloads, which it is calling computer backup
- digital signatures to sign files stored in Dropbox – also in beta
Dropbox already
- syncs files in the main Dropbox folder – the core service
- backs up phone photos
- allows for collaborative document creation and editing like Google Docs, with its Paper product
This checks off a lot of the services we’d discussed for Mozilla to offer, and is for Dropbox a more ambitious positioning than a cloud storage providers, which Steve Jobs had once dismissed as a ‘feature, not a product’
[1] Without of course Mozilla’s reputation for privacy-consciousness.