In the early days, Google and Dropbox took very different directions. Even though the two services are becoming increasingly similar, you can still see the difference in their approaches today. Dropbox’s focus was and still is on synchronizing files between different users. The software provided for this makes collaborating in specific folders extraordinarily easy.
Initially, Google only intended Drive to be storage space for Gmail accounts and the cloud computing services associated with Google Docs. It was not until 2012 that users could manage their cloud storage as a single system. This service also provides its users with an enormous amount of storage space free of charge for this purpose. This strategy was also successful when Gmail was introduced and has attracted many people to Google's email service.
Trends show that the two cloud storage services are becoming increasingly similar. Google also provides software which synchronizes folders on your PC with cloud storage, while Dropbox is currently targeting functions with Paper which were previously only found on Google Docs.
Meanwhile, many users are only concerned with the amount of storage space provided, and Google clearly provides more in both its free and paid versions. In this regard, Google provides better value for your money. However, Dropbox differentiates itself with a unique idea which leads to higher speeds. Instead of replacing the entire file when a change is made, Dropbox only copies and replaces the edited parts. This significantly increases the transfer speed.
In terms of data security, there is little difference between the two companies. Nowadays, both Google and Dropbox have adopted standards which are widely accepted as secure. This was not always the case. In the past, both companies have found themselves embroiled in data breach scandals. In 2013 it was discovered that the NSA, an American governmental agency, was monitoring Google’s servers, and in 2016 unidentified parties published the login information for several million Dropbox accounts on the internet.