Dropbox acquires Mailbox and the team behind it

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 15, 2013
Email
|
7

Dropbox's buying spree has not ended yet. The company today announced that it acquired the email app Mailbox and the team behind it. Mailbox is Dropbox's third acquisition in the last months. The company acquired Audiogalaxy, a music service and Snapjoy, a photo service, in December 2012.

Mailbox is on the other hand nothing that you'd link to hosting right away. The application is currently available for Apple's iPhone and compatible with Gmail. It turns Gmail into a productivity application by combining the capabilities of Google's mail service with productivity features that improve how you manage your mails.

Mailbox is a completely redesigned inbox that makes email light, fast, and mobile-friendly. Quickly swipe messages to your archive or trash. Scan an entire conversation at once with chat-like organization. Snooze emails until later with the tap of a button — they’ll return to your inbox automatically so you can focus on what's important now.

So what is Dropbox's plan with Mailbox? The company plans to keep the mail app alive for now, which is a welcome change in a world where most acquisitions are not kept alive. The blog post is vague on what Dropbox has in store for Mailbox, only that the company plans to make Mailbox even better and get it into the hand of more users. This can mean a variety of things, from apps for additional platforms to new email service support for the Mailbox app. It is unlikely that we will see an integration of Mailbox into Dropbox, but we could see an integration of Dropbox into the Mailbox application.

How that could look like? Get email users to use Dropbox when they are about to attach files to their emails instead of another solution. It could also add options to the app to transfer attachments to the cloud. There is definitely potential for synergies in the deal. For now though expect everything to run along like before.

Advertisement

Tutorials & Tips


Previous Post: «
Next Post: «

Comments

  1. Peter said on August 20, 2013 at 7:18 am
    Reply

    How to get 1Gb extra DropBox space?

    – install MailBox on your iOs device
    – link your DropBox account to it
    => You get 1Gb extra!!!

    You have already linked your Dropbox account to MailBox?
    No problem: unlink it and link it again and you’ll also get that 1Gb extra.
    Nice isn’t it?

  2. Simon said on March 16, 2013 at 5:55 am
    Reply

    Let’s hope this is not another Google/Sparrow affair.

  3. ilev said on March 16, 2013 at 12:44 am
    Reply

    Mailbox is the best mail application for iOS.

  4. beemeeup said on March 15, 2013 at 9:04 pm
    Reply

    Now if only they can acquire their own servers instead of relying on a third party’s backend for storing user data (among other things).

    Not-so-rosy info on Dropbox: http://dumpdropbox.com/

    1. Nebulus said on March 16, 2013 at 5:20 am
      Reply

      That site name is misleading because the information presented there is true both for Dropbox and other cloud storage providers (they mention it at the end of the page, but people just reading the site name or the first part of the article will believe that the problems are related only to Dropbox).

      1. beemeeup said on March 16, 2013 at 5:57 pm
        Reply

        It’s not misleading if the information is accurate. I definitely saw the part about other storage providers having similar problems but those providers can be lumped into the same category as Dropbox anyways. Just because some others have the same problems doesn’t mean Dropbox is any good. Why use a middleman when you can just use Amazon S3 directly? That’s a key point.

        Dropbox may have been singled out, but I wouldn’t use any service that has the same problems as Dropbox either. If you wouldn’t use Dropbox because of a certain set of problems, you wouldn’t use any service with the same set of problems as Dropbox. That’s the whole point.

Leave a Reply

Check the box to consent to your data being stored in line with the guidelines set out in our privacy policy

We love comments and welcome thoughtful and civilized discussion. Rudeness and personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please stay on-topic.
Please note that your comment may not appear immediately after you post it.