In the case of Dropbox, 4 months ago, I speculated about the motivations behind the Carousel product: <a href="http://kiyototamura.tumblr.com/post/82662241570/dropboxs-carousel-is-different" rel="nofollow">http://kiyototamura.tumblr.com/post/82662241570/dropboxs-car...</a><p>While Carousel itself is considered to be a flop by some (<a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/04/why-standalone-apps-are-supposed-to-fail/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/04/why-standalone-apps-are-sup...</a>), I think the overall strategy seems correct, or at least, less wrong: go up the application stack based on their strong user base in the data storage layer.