This is a timeline of online file storage and collaboration service Dropbox.
Full timeline Year Month and date Event type Details 2005 Competition Box.net, an online file sharing and content management service for businesses, is launched. It IPOs in March 2014. 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. 2007 August Competition Microsoft launches Windows Live SkyDrive (later OneDrive), which also provides users with free storage. 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. This helped its beta waiting list expand from 5,000 people to 75,000 people literally overnight.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. 2009 October Product Dropbox acquires the dropbox.com domain for $300,000 in cash. 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. 2010 May International Dropbox announces that it has been blocked by the Chinese government. 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. The error was caused by an authentication code update. 2012 February Acquisitions Dropbox acquires stealth startup Cove. 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. 2012 November 12 Userbase Dropbox announces it reaches 100 million users.By Victoria Barret, Forbes. "Dropbox Hits 100 Million Users Says Drew Houston." November 11, 2013. December 2, 2013. 2012 December International Dropbox announces plans to establish its first international office in Dublin, Ireland. 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. 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. 2013 November 13 Userbase Dropbox announces it reaches 200 million users. 2013 November 13 Product Dropbox announces it will unveil Dropbox for businesses. 2014 February Team Dropbox hires Dennis Woodside, who ran Motorola Mobility for Google, as its chief operating officer. 2014 April 17 Acquisitions Dropbox acquires Hackpad, a real-time collaborative text editor. 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. 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. 2015 February Partnerships Dropbox partners with Vodafone, a British multinational telecommunications company, to offer file storage to Vodafone's 400 million wireless customers. 2015 August 12 Product Dropbox announces availability of its USB security key which provides two-factor authentication to its services. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.2016August 31SecurityDropbox confirms that a 2012 security incident had exposed hashed passwords and email addresses for more than 69 million user accounts, after a copy of the stolen data began circulating online. 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.2017June 19ProductDropbox 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.2018February 15FinancialDropbox launches the Dropbox Foundation, which focuses on promoting and protecting human rights by partnering with impactful nonprofits.2018MarchFinancialDropbox has successfully secured $756 million for its IPO, with 36 million shares priced at $21 each.2018November 6ProductDropbox 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. The launch partners are Adobe Sign, DocuSign and HelloSign for electronic signature, Nitro, airSlate and Smallpdf for PDF editing, Autodesk for DWG files, Vimeo for video annotation, Pixlr for image editing and HelloFax for fax.2019January 28AcquisitionsDropbox announces its acquisition of e-signature software company HelloSign for $230 million. Computerworld later listed HelloSign among six e-signature tools, alongside Adobe Acrobat Sign, DocuSign, Eversign, PandaDoc and signNow.2019MayProductDropbox announces Rewind, a new feature that can roll back an account to any point in the past 30 days.2020October 13TeamDropbox is from now on becoming a remote-first company.2021March 9AcquisitionsDropbox announces its acquisition of document sharing startup DocSend for $165 million.2021October 29AcquisitionsDropbox announces that an agreement to acquire universal search company Command E has been signed.2022November 29AcquisitionsDropbox 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.2022December 16AcquisitionsDropbox announces the acquisition of form management platform FormSwift for $95 million.2023June 21FinancialDropbox launches Dropbox Ventures, a $50 million venture fund focused on startups in the AI space.2023June 21ProductDropbox announces Dash, an AI-powered universal search, and Dropbox AI, which uses generative AI to answer questions and summarize large files.2023October 10ProductDropbox announces Dropbox Studio, a video collaboration tool, that can be used to create, edit, review and publish videos.2024May 1SecurityDropbox discloses that an intruder used a compromised service account to access Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign) production systems, obtaining customer emails, usernames, phone numbers, hashed passwords, API keys, OAuth tokens and multi-factor authentication information. Dropbox says it found no evidence that document contents or payment information were accessed.2024October 30TeamDropbox cuts about 20% of its global workforce, eliminating 528 roles. CEO Drew Houston says the company's core file-sync-and-share business has matured and that its organizational structure had become "overly complex, with excess layers of management."2026May 26TeamDropbox announces that co-founder and CEO Drew Houston will transition to executive chairman after 19 years leading the company. Ashraf Alkarmi, general manager of Dropbox's core business since 2024, is promoted to co-CEO and is expected to become sole CEO after a transition period. Dropbox also names Michael Torres, a former Google and Amazon executive, as chief product officer effective July 7.
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