I think services/sites can be divided into two when considering how/if people switch between them: (i) aggregate sites whose value is a (generally nonlinear) function of all users who use the site and (ii) personal sites whose impact is just for the person who uses it. The fact that I'm using Dropbox, too, doesn't provide any value to you (except of course economies of scale)
YouTube, Flickr, YouTube, etc. are Type I sites, it's hard to switch from them to competitors because it's hard to do it individually, a large majority of the users must switch, too, creating a chicken and egg problem.
Google Search, Dropbox, etc. are of Type II. You use these sites just because they are better than the competition. As soon as this is not the case, you, individually, can easily switch. You may call these commodity sites. That's why Bing is such a big threat to Google, and Dropbox is doomed if Google comes up with cheaper plans and sync clients as good as theirs.
That being said, one shouldn't assume that Google will dominate any market they enter, they have the capability of doing do, but in practice this may not happen: putting too few people on the project, wrong design decisions, crappy clients, etc.
Good point, I haven't thought about that. I wonder what percentage of content is shared, though. But this suggests one important strategy for Dropbox, they should immediately put more emphasis and develop better tools for content sharing to make their service more sticky fro people.
Great point. It's easy to forget this when you're doing a tech or internet company... But you still need a defensible strategy, and some competitive advantage if you want to successful in the long term. Yes, DropBox got it right compared to others so far, but that still doesn't mean the barriers to entry are high.. give people enough time, and you'll start losing market share to another saavy competitor
YouTube, Flickr, YouTube, etc. are Type I sites, it's hard to switch from them to competitors because it's hard to do it individually, a large majority of the users must switch, too, creating a chicken and egg problem.
Google Search, Dropbox, etc. are of Type II. You use these sites just because they are better than the competition. As soon as this is not the case, you, individually, can easily switch. You may call these commodity sites. That's why Bing is such a big threat to Google, and Dropbox is doomed if Google comes up with cheaper plans and sync clients as good as theirs.
That being said, one shouldn't assume that Google will dominate any market they enter, they have the capability of doing do, but in practice this may not happen: putting too few people on the project, wrong design decisions, crappy clients, etc.