Dropbox will shut down email app Mailbox and photo service Carousel in February and March, respectively, and incorporate key features from each into its own app.
“Building new products is about learning as much as it’s about making. It’s also about tough choices,” CEO Drew Houston and CTO Arash Ferdowsi wrote in a blog post. “Over the past few months, we’ve increased our team’s focus on collaboration and simplifying the way people work together.”
That led them to “the difficult decision” to shut down Carousel and Mailbox.
Dropbox acquired the popular Mailbox in March 2013 in hopes of bettering mobile email. But as the company discovered, “there’s only so much an email app can do to fundamentally fix email.” So on Feb. 26, users will swipe their messages for the last time.
“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,” the Mailbox Team wrote in a separate blog post.
Dropbox-original Carousel, meanwhile, rolled out in April 2014 to store and sort “tens of thousands of photos arranged chronologically for a lifetime of memories.” The standalone iOS and Android app allows users quick access to their images, hundreds of which can be shared at a time.
“Over the past year and a half, we’ve learned the vast majority of our users prefer the convenience and simplicity of interacting with their photos directly inside of Dropbox,” the Carousel blog said.
Starting on March 31, folks can return to that single photo experience. All pictures saved to your Carousel timeline will remain in Dropbox, accessible via the Photos tab. Any conversations or shared albums you want to save, however, must be exported.
The company promised to communicate more details with users directly over the coming days; it has also published guides and export tools to make the transition easier.
For those Mailbox users falling back on Gmail, Google today announced a new way to keep track of your to-dos alongside scheduled events. Starting this week, you can create Reminders in Google Calendar, where the notices remain until they are complete. The function—rolling out this week with the latest versions of Calendar for iOS and Android—is also compatible with Inbox, Keep, and Google Now.