Dropbox launches Paper to rival Google Docs

Oh, and there are even stickers (ugh) so you can comment with big cartoons. It’s called Paper – much like Facebook’s news reader, FiftyThree’s drawing app, and likely a dozen other products – and right now Dropbox is inviting select consumers to beta test it. According to Wired, “Paper is expanding today from a few thousand people to a few thousand teams, but won’t be widely available for a while”. Recently edited documents, a tab for documents the user has created, documents shared with the user, and a Deleted tab. You can do your basic bold, italics, underline and strikethrough formatting and format text into a block quote, but that’s about it. Dropbox specifically said that the objective of Paper was to keep the focus on sharing ideas rather than formatting.

The more interesting thing about Paper is the way that it handles rich media: you can embed YouTube videos and SoundCloud files simply by pasting in the URL, or tap the “+” button next to any paragraph to access a menu that will let you add photos, tables, or links to other Dropbox files, among other things. For instance, you can import any document from your Dropbox account, and it a preview will be formatted automatically onto the program. But it’s real power seems to shine through with collaboration, where Dropbox is looking to take the lead over established players like Google Docs and Microsoft Office. Just like Gmail, items you delete aren’t really deleted until you really, really want to delete them entirely. You can insert documents like photos or videos, and you can download documents.

From the limited previews that are out there, the service seems a lot like Google Wave, the ill-fated collaboration tool that was brought down by a lack of interest after many users failed to understand what the product was actually about.

When asked what differentiates Paper from other similar tools, Pan said that Paper, unlike most other tools, primarily focuses on building documents that let users work and share multiple content types regardless of what tool was used to create them. And several other companies.

Simply having a good product philosophy doesn’t mean people will adopt it, which is why Dropbox is being slow and deliberate with Paper’s rollout.

This week the folks at Dropbox have turned the switch on for Paper, the final name for the until-now-beta release of “Notes”.

As we reported earlier this year, Dropbox has previously struggled to capture enough paying business customers to justify the $10 billion valuation it got in its last round, and a couple of mutual funds marked down the value of their Dropbox holdings earlier this month, as The Information reported.