Dive Brief:
- Dropbox is partnering with Google Cloud and creating a centralized repository for content, according to a company announcement. Integrating with the G Suite, Dropbox users can "create, open, edit and save" Google content products from inside the platform. Users will also be able to save Google Docs, Sheets and Slides directly to Dropbox accounts.
- Part of the offering also allows Dropbox Business customers to manage hosted Google content. And with integrations into Google and its Hangout Chats, customers can easily create files and send content links.
- Customers can access integrations with Google Cloud later this year.
Dive Insight:
On the heels of its IPO announcement, Dropbox is formally partnering with Google and directly confronting some of the biggest concerns about its platform's capabilities. Without collaboration across the ecosystem of collaboration and content management tools, paying customers would remain slow to adopt Dropbox's tools.
Dropbox is very aware of the problems users are facing when it comes to content. Confronted with too many "storage buckets, apps and devices," users waste time going between platforms to access documents or content.
The company lacked integrations across platforms, which limited its penetration and impact in the content management market, relegating it as the tool of choice for SMBs.
Integrating with much larger platforms — such as Google, Microsoft and Adobe — allows Dropbox to address "collaboration overload" while solving some of the pain points organizations face when using G Suite or Office 365, such as poor search capabilities.
In the past two months, Dropbox has formalized partnerships with Google, Microsoft and Adobe, just in time for the its IPO later this year. Collaborating with larger platforms allows the company to broaden access to its tools while convincing the market it has longevity and the long-term potential to turn a profit.
