Dropbox acquisition sprees continues with Loom, Hackpad additions

Dropbox has added photo app Loom and collaborative document tool Hackpad to its list of acquisitions. Early this year the company took over corporate chat tool Zulip and social ebook reader Readmill.

The personal photo-stream app Loom fits perfectly into Dropbox's scheme of things since the team of eight who created Loom is now working on Dropbox's new Carousel photo app which it unveiled earlier this month. Users of Loom will be migrated to Carousel.

Loom co-founder, Jan Senderek said, "There was 100 percent alignment of the things we wanted to build and how we wanted to build them," he adds, "For us it was the decision, either we're going to go into a war with Dropbox - or is it more important that we build this?"

Hackpad, a Y Combinator startup and an online text editor, is not being killed at the moment. Dropbox has, however, given clear instructions to makers of Hackpad that it doesn't want a Microsoft Word clone. In case of Redmill, an app that worked across ebooks from various sources and vendors, the seven member team that joined Dropbox haven't been assigned a project yet. The action plan for Zulip is undecided currently.

Recode notes, that the cloud-storage company is going through a hiring spree and fundraising stockpile as the cloud-storage company makes its journey from being a service to a 'platform'.

Dropbox is apparently gung-ho about the transition it is currently undergoing and internally calling it "Chapter Two" of its journey.

Earlier, Dropbox had acquired the Mailbox email client, recently announcing it for Android and desktops.

Talking about all the acquisitions, Corporate Development Head for Dropbox, Sara Adler said, "Fundamentally, we look at teams that we can bring into Dropbox that can help us accelerate our vision. We're not just throwing money around; that's not how we operate."

Dropbox recently updated its app for Android and iOS users. The latest update brings mostly visual tweaks and no changes in the service.