Timeline of Dropbox

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

Big picture

Time period	Key developments at Dropbox
2007–2010	Dropbox launches. It goes from 100,000 registered users in September 2008 to over 4 million in January 2010.
2011–2016	Dropbox reaches 50 million registered users in October 2011, and then 400 million registered users in June 2015.

Full timeline

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 2GB of free storage. It also announces storage pricing tiers, with 50GB Dropbox for $9.99/month, or $99.99/year.[6]
2008	November	Funding	Dropbox raises $6 million in Series A round led by Sequoia Capital.[7]
2009	October	Product	Dropbox finally acquires the dropbox.com domain.[8]
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. [9] [10]
2010	May	International	Dropbox announces that it has been blocked by the Chinese government.[11][12][13][14][15]
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.[16] The error was caused by an authentication code update made at 1:54 p.m. Pacific Time;[17] it was detected at 5:41 p.m. and immediately fixed. About 1% of Dropbox's users were logged in at that time; all sessions were immediately terminated. All users with compromised accounts were notified by email.[18][19]
2011	June 20	Competition	Microsoft overhauls the user interface for Microsoft OneDrive, built using HTML5 technologies. The updated version featured caching, hardware acceleration, HTML5 video, quick views, cleaner arrangement of photos and infinite scrolling. Microsoft also doubled the file size limit from 50 MB to 100 MB per file. With this update, Microsoft consolidated the different entry points for SkyDrive, such as Windows Live Photos and Windows Live Office, into one single interface. Files and folders shared with a user, including those in Windows Live Groups, were also accessible in the new interface.[20]
2011	October 18	Funding	With 45 million users, Dropbox raises $250M In Funding in a Series B round.[21]
2012	February	Acquisitions	Dropbox acquires stealth startup Cove, bringing Ruchi Sanghvi and Aditya Agarwal onto the team. [22] [23]
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.[24]
2012	November 12	Growth	Dropbox announces it reaches 100 million users.[25]
2012	December	International	Dropbox announces plans to establish its first international office in Dublin, Ireland.[26]
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. Financial terms were not released at the time of the acquisition.[27]
2013	March	Acquisitions	Dropbox acquires Mailbox, a sleek email platform specifically for mobile users.[28]
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.[29][30]
2013	November 13	Growth	Dropbox announces it reaches 200 million users.[31]
2013	November 13	Product	Dropbox announces it will unveil Dropbox for businesses. [32]
2014	January	Funding	Dropbox raises $250 million funding round, valuing the company at $10 billion.[33]
2014	February	Team	Dropbox hires Dennis Woodside, who ran Motorola Mobility for Google, as its chief operating officer. [34] [35]
2014	April	Team	Dropbox adds former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to its board. [36]
2014	April 17	Acquisitions	Dropbox acquires Hackpad, a real-time collaborative text editor.[37][38]
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.[39][40][41]
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. [42]
2015	February	Partnerships	Dropbox partners with Vodafone, a British multinational telecommunications company, to offer file storage to Vodafone's 400 million wireless customers. [43]
2015	July	Team	Dropbox hires its first head of sales, Thomas Hansen, who was previously senior VP of small and medium business products at Microsoft. [44]
2015	August 12	Product	Dropbox announces availability of its USB security key which provides two-factor authentication to its services.[45]
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. [46]
2016	March	Product, Competition	Dropbox announces that it now stores over 90% of its user data on its own infrastructure stack as it continues to wean itself off of its influence from Amazon S3.[47]
2016	April 26	Product	Dropbox announces Project Infinite – a service with the goal of giving business customers local access to files no matter where they live. This means that they no longer need to store all their files on their local drives.[48]
2016	August 3	Product	Dropbox launches an iPhone and Android version of its document-editing app, Paper [49]

See also

• Timeline of Microsoft
• Timeline of LinkedIn
• Timeline of Facebook
• Timeline of Reddit

References

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 2013-06-03. 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.
4. "Digg – Google Drive killer coming from MIT Startup". Digg. Archived from the original on March 14, 2008. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
5. "How DropBox Started As A Minimal Viable Product". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
6. "Dropbox launches to the public!". Retrieved April 20, 2016.
7. "Dropbox". Crunchbase. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
8. Kincaid, Jason (October 13, 2009). "Dropbox Acquires The Domain Everyone Thought It Had: Dropbox.com". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 25, 2010.
9. Victoria Barret (October 18, 2011). "Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup". Forbes. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
10. "Dropbox Said No To A "Nine-Digit" Acquisition Offer From Apple, Steve Jobs". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
11. "dropbox banned". techwhack. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
12. "dropbox blocked". neowin. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
13. "dropbox blocked". geek.com. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
14. "dropbox blocked". shanghaiist. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
15. "Dropbox Blocked in China". mingtiandi. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
16. "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
17. "Dropbox confirms security glitch—no password required".
18. Jason Kincaid (June 20, 2011). "Dropbox Security Bug Made Passwords Optional For Four Hours". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 20, 2011.
19. "dropbox.com". Blog.dropbox.com. June 20, 2011. Retrieved December 21, 2011.
20. Shahine, Omar (June 20, 2011). "Introducing SkyDrive for the modern web, built using HTML5". Inside Windows Live. Microsoft. Archived from the original on December 30, 2012. Retrieved 2011-06-20.
21. "Dropbox Raises $250M In Funding, Boasts 45 Million Users". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
22. "Dropbox Buys Cove To Bring Former Facebookers Ruchi Sanghvi And Aditya Agarwal To The Team". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
23. "Dropbox May Have Just Acqui-Hired A New CTO – Business Insider". Businessinsider.com. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
24. "Dropbox Gets Automatic Photo Uploads, Offers 3 GB Incentive". TIME. April 27, 2012. Retrieved April 30, 2012.
25. By Victoria Barret, Forbes. "Dropbox Hits 100 Million Users Says Drew Houston." November 11, 2013. December 2, 2013.
26. "Dropbox Picks Dublin for Its Second Office – Liz Gannes – News – AllThingsD". Allthingsd.com. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
27. Lunden, Ingrid (December 19, 2012). "Dropbox Acquires Snapjoy And Puts Photos Into Its Focus". Techcrunch.com.
28. "Dropbox has acquired Mailbox, TapEngage, Endorse, Foundry Hiring, Sold, Zulip, Readmill, HackPad, Loom". Upstart.bizjournals.com. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
29. Greenwald, Glenn (6 June 2013). "NSA taps in to internet giants' systems to mine user data, secret files reveal". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
30. Gellman, Barton (6 June 2013). "Documents: U.S. mining data from 9 leading Internet firms; companies deny knowledge". The Washington Post. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
31. Constine, Josh. "Dropbox Hits 200M Users, Unveils New For Business Client Combining Work And Personal Files". TechCrunch. Retrieved 13 November 2013.
32. "Dropbox Aims at Business". The New York Times. 2013-11-13. Retrieved August 27, 2016.
33. "Dropbox Closes Roughly $250M Round At $10B Valuation, WSJ Says". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved April 20, 2016.
34. "Dropbox hires first COO amid Google divestiture – Fortune". Fortune.com. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
35. "Dropbox COO Dennis Woodside profile – Business Insider". Businessinsider.com. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
36. "Dropbox Adds Condoleezza Rice to Board, Rankles Valley Orthodoxy - Digits". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 27, 2016.
37. Mike Billings (April 17, 2014). "Dropbox Acquires Startups Loom, Hackpad in Push to Expand Services". WSJ.
38. "Hackpad is teaming up with Dropbox!". hackpad.com.
39. "We're partnering with Microsoft". Dropbox. 4 November 2014.
40. "Dropbox and Microsoft form surprise partnership for Office integration". theverge.com. 4 November 2014.
41. Bass, Dina (4 November 2014). "Microsoft Teams Up With Dropbox to Target Mobile, Business Users". bloomberg.com.
42. "Dropbox Opens Up to Business Software Developers - Digits". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 27, 2016.
43. "Dropbox Taps Vodafone for International Growth - Digits". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 27, 2016.
44. "Dropbox Hires Its First Head of Sales, Longtime Microsoft Executive Thomas Hansen – Recode". Recode.net. Retrieved June 5, 2016.
45. "DropBox Adds USB Security Key Protection". Geek Inspector.
46. "Dropbox Is Pulling 'Mailbox' and 'Carousel' Apps - Digits". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved August 27, 2016.
47. "Scaling to exabytes and beyond". Retrieved April 27, 2016.
48. "Dropbox's latest idea could change the way you think about cloud storage". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
49. Matthew Lynley (August 3, 2016). "Dropbox launches an iPhone and Android version of its document-editing app Paper". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved August 3, 2016.