Dropbox was founded by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007. The company came about not because they thought it would be a great business idea. Instead, it was developed out of need. Necessity is often the mother of invention and that is what happened here.
The pair, tired of emailing themselves documents when they were going to be working at different computers than the ones the files were created on, got to work creating an efficient file sharing system. By setting up a secure folder on a server, they were able to access files no matter where they were. The idea took off and quickly spread through the university.
Today, Dropbox is probably one of the best known cloud storage and sharing providers. With over 300 million active users worldwide, it’s easy to see why some would consider it the number one platform.
In addition to offering personal space to share and save files and photos, Dropbox also offers a business level platform. This package gives users additional features to help their company grow.
Dropbox wasn not the first to develop the idea of shared storage. Google began working on an online storage platform as early as 2006. Sadly, it took the search engine giant an additional six years before their idea was ready to be used by the world. Google Drive made its official debut on April 24, 2012.
Like its competitor, Google Drive offers consumers a place to store and share files, videos, and photos. With an average of 240 million active users each month, world-wide, this cloud storage platform has the right to claim top status as well.
In addition to being a storage platform, Google Drive offers users a host of office tools, allowing them to edit and collaborate on stored files without leaving the cloud site, even with recent changes.