Dropbox acquires Hackpad (YC W12)

Just a little side note. I really wish people would give an overview of what their service is or does in press releases like this. Quite often, I see 'Facebook bought x' or 'Dropbox bought y' and I click to see what it is, and if I would want to use it. More often than not, there's no little blurb that lets me know what their product even does.

I think this makes a lot of sense for Dropbox. Documents are moving online, which means people won&#x27;t need Dropbox for them.<p>I have a half-written blog post from months ago on why Dropbox should by Quip for this reason - they should be trying to leapfrog Google Docs to stay competitive.<p>Best of luck to the team!

My favorite parts of Hackpad were the features that weren&#x27;t intended to have mass-market appeal (ex: code syntax highlighting, markdown-inspired keybindings, ability to easily create&#x2F;delete accounts). These will likely be gone in whatever notes product that Dropbox makes with the help of the (wonderful) Hackpad team.<p>So for me, this acquisition seems like a loss. I realize that Hackpad has said that they&#x27;ll keep the site alive, but I expect it to be less functional if everyone maintaining it is a full-time Dropbox employee now. Fingers crossed that there will someday exist a good collaborative doc editor for hackers that doesn&#x27;t fall over when &gt;10 people connect or require a Google account!<p>Full disclosure: I have written code and done security auditing for Hackpad. I tried to get them to add vim mode. :)

One of those &#x27;no brainer&#x27; moves, glad to see it got done. Love the irony of a YC exit as an acquisition by a YC company :-) Congratulations, hackpad is an awesome product and the combination with Dropbox has excellent potential.

Acquihires are pretty much the default hiring method these days, so &quot;victory&quot; now requires keeping the product active after acquisition.<p>A toast, then, to Hackpad. Well done.

This is an exceptional deal. The hackpad team is awesome, the product makes sense, and I remember thinking after Box bought Crocodoc, that Hackpad would make sense as part of Dropbox, especially as it went enterprise and started competing with Word, Google Docs etc.<p>Congrats to the Hackpad team and to Dropbox here. Solid deal.

Hackpad is pretty awesome. Glad it will still be running after the acquisition. Congrats Alex &amp; Igor

Ugh, Etherpad shoulda been copyleft. Hackpad is a travesty for being so non-transparent that they&#x27;re just a tweak of Etherpad.

Congrats Alex and Igore, Hackpad is really impressive. Great move by Dropbox.<p>What&#x27;s the state of the opensource alternatives? Etherpad development seems to have plateaued a while ago.

We love Hackpad at Rollbar. Congrats guys, keep up the good work!

Please don&#x27;t shut it down, like Readmill. I use Hackpad daily, and I&#x27;d hate to see it go by the way of Readmill and shoved down the toilet.

DropBox looks like the company that walks on four legs, then two, then three. First, it was just a smart choice to replace emailing yourself files. Pretty soon, it will be an IBM, where some sales guy will convince your boss that the DropBox Q1000 is what your business needs for synergy and you&#x27;ll end up having to use it.

This is how it was always going to go.<p>Dropbox&#x27;s core business is unsustainable, and they can&#x27;t compete long-term with rivals like Google and Apple.<p>They&#x27;re flailing in all directions at the moment; pushing for the enterprise&#x2F;government market with the appointment of Condoleezza Rice, now burning a load of money acquiring businesses offering tangential services, in the hope they can diversify their business model.<p>It won&#x27;t work. Acquisitions like this never go to plan, and they are almost always a waste of money.

Is the landing page terribly jittery for anyone else? I can barely tell what&#x27;s going on and scrolling takes a bit to respond.

Well this is not very promissing: <a href="http://i.imgur.com/1vCvZzI.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;1vCvZzI.png</a>

Hackpad and Loom? Dropbox is on a bit of a feeding frenzy.

hahahaha ctl-f for &quot;journey&quot;

Sounds like redirection for the Condoleezza Rice fallout.

Hackpad seems down at the moment. Wouldn&#x27;t trust them with my documents.