This is a timeline of online file storage and collaboration service Dropbox.
| 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 2 GB of free storage. It also announces storage pricing tiers, with 50 GB Dropbox for $9.99/month, or $99.99/year.[6] | |
| 2009 | October | Product | Dropbox acquires the dropbox.com domain for $300,000 in cash.[7] | |
| 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.[8] | |
| 2010 | May | International | Dropbox announces that it has been blocked by the Chinese government.[9] [10] [11] [12] [13] | |
| 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.[14] The error was caused by an authentication code update.[15] | |
| 2012 | February | Acquisitions | Dropbox acquires stealth startup Cove.[16] | |
| 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.[17] | |
| 2012 | November 12 | Userbase | Dropbox announces it reaches 100 million users.[18] | |
| 2012 | December | International | Dropbox announces plans to establish its first international office in Dublin, Ireland.[19] | |
| 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. | |
| 2013 | March | Acquisitions | Dropbox acquires Mailbox, a sleek email platform specifically for mobile users.[20] | |
| 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.[21] [22] | |
| 2013 | November 13 | Userbase | Dropbox announces it reaches 200 million users. | |
| 2013 | November 13 | Product | Dropbox announces it will unveil Dropbox for businesses.[23] | |
| 2014 | February | Team | Dropbox hires Dennis Woodside, who ran Motorola Mobility for Google, as its chief operating officer.[24] [25] | |
| 2014 | April 17 | Acquisitions | Dropbox acquires Hackpad, a real-time collaborative text editor.[26] [27] | |
| 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.[28] [29] [30] | |
| 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.[31] | |
| 2015 | February | Partnerships | Dropbox partners with Vodafone, a British multinational telecommunications company, to offer file storage to Vodafone's 400 million wireless customers.[32] | |
| 2015 | August 12 | Product | Dropbox announces availability of its USB security key which provides two-factor authentication to its services.[33] | |
| 2015 | October 15 | Product | Dropbox rebrands its six-month-old product invite-only beta product Notes as Dropbox Paper, and expands the beta significantly. The product, that facilitates collaborative document editing, is available only on the web at this time.[34] [35] | |
| 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.[36] | |
| 2016 | March | Product, Competition | Dropbox announces that it now stores over 90% of its user data on its own infrastructure stack as it moves away from Amazon S3.[37] [38] [39] | |
| 2016 | June 14 | Financial | Dropbox CEO Drew Houston announces that the company is free cash flow positive, but is not in a rush to IPO. Commentators note that this does not imply that the company is profitable, since free cash flow does not include a number of expenses.[40] | |
| 2016 | August 3 | Product | Dropbox launches an iPhone and Android version of its document-editing app, Paper, and upgrades it from invite-only beta to open beta.[41] | |
| 2016 | November 16 | Product | As part of its AdminX initiative for Dropbox Business users, Dropbox launches additional features to improve security of business documents and prevent people from accessing them through personal accounts. Admin controls are extended to Dropbox Paper. Also, Dropbox announces an infrastructure expansion in Europe and Asia, to cater to its large non-US audience. As of this date, Dropbox has more than 30 security partnerships across areas such as data loss prevention, enterprise mobility management, identity and access management, data migration, eDiscovery, and analytics.[42] [43] | |
| 2017 | June 19 | Product | Dropbox announces plans to further grow its worldwide private network in North America, Europe, and Australia by introducing five new regional accelerators. This move aims to enhance performance and reliability for all its users around the world.[44] | |
| 2018 | February 15 | Financial | Dropbox launches the Dropbox Foundation, which focuses on promoting and protecting human rights by partnering with impactful nonprofits.[45] | |
| 2018 | March | Financial | Dropbox has successfully secured $756 million for its IPO, with 36 million shares priced at $21 each.[46] | |
| 2018 | November 6 | Product | Dropbox announces Dropbox Extensions, which allow users to initiate workflows directly within Dropbox, e.g. the ability to edit PDFs, to view and edit DWGs, to annotate videos or to send electronic fax.[47] | |
| 2019 | January 28 | Acquisitions | Dropbox announces its acquisition of e-signature software company HelloSign for $230 million.[48] | |
| 2019 | May | Product | Dropbox announces Rewind, a new feature that can roll back an account to any point in the past 30 days.[49] | |
| 2020 | October 13 | Team | Dropbox is from now on becoming a remote-first company.[50] | |
| 2021 | March 9 | Acquisitions | Dropbox announces its acquisition of document sharing startup DocSend for $165 million.[51] | |
| 2021 | October 29 | Acquisitions | Dropbox announces that an agreement to acquire universal search company Command E has been signed.[52] | |
| 2022 | November 29 | Acquisitions | Dropbox announces that an agreement to acquire several key assets from Boxcryptor has been signed. Boxcryptor is a provider of end-to-end zero-knowledge encryption for cloud storage services.[53] | |
| 2022 | December 16 | Acquisitions | Dropbox announces the acquisition of form management platform FormSwift for $95 million.[54] | |
| 2023 | June 21 | Financial | Dropbox launches Dropbox Ventures, a $50 million venture fund focused on startups in the AI space.[55] | |
| 2023 | June 21 | Product | Dropbox announces Dash, an AI-powered universal search, and Dropbox AI, which uses generative AI to answer questions and summarize large files.[56] | |
| 2023 | October 10 | Product | Dropbox announces Dropbox Studio, a video collaboration tool, that can be used to create, edit, review and publish videos.[57] |