Dropbox to Drop Carousel and Mailbox Apps in 2016
Dropbox will be shutting down its email app Mailbox and photo sharing app Carousel in the first quarter to give more focus on its core product.
In an announcement posted on its official blog, file hosting company Dropbox announced that its Mailbox service will end on Feb. 26, 2016 and its photo sharing service Carousel will also shut down on Mar. 31, 2016. Starting on those dates, users can no longer sign in to the respective apps, but those who received bonus space for using the apps will continue to retain the additional storage, according to MacRumors.
Since investors and observers have been closely scrutinizing Dropbox's $10 billion valuation, the cloud storage firm has decided to streamline its business. The company hinted that it will focus on its collaboration app Paper and develop new productivity tools, TechCrunch reports.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"We've come to believe that the best way for us to improve people's productivity going forward is to streamline the workflows that generate so much email in the first place," MacRumors quotes Mailbox's statement.
Carousel also released a statement explaining that the app was launched with the initial belief that a stand-alone app would create better photo experience for Dropbox users. However, the past year and a half has made them realize that most of their users prefer to store and access their photos directly in Dropbox, the report relays.
In connection with the upcoming shutdown of the two apps, the file hosting giant will send back the "Snoozed" emails to users' inboxes, clear email drafts, and delete "auto-swipe" patterns in Mailbox on Feb. 26.
Carousel users, on the other hand, will still be able to access their timeline photos via Dropbox, and they will be able to save shared albums and conversations using an export tool that will come out early next year. For now, they can store their files in shared albums to Dropbox from Carousel.
Dropbox said it will take the key features of Carousel and integrate them with the main file hosting site. They will also develop the features found in Mailbox to create better collaboration tools. Meanwhile, Mailbox and Carousel have released a set of Frequently Answered Questions to assist the users in the transition.
