Re River's comment
"Thank you all for the comments and questions about the Public folder. We understand this decision impacts many of your workflows, and requires time to update the links for your shared content."
fair enough.. but this is only the half of it.
"In many cases, our newer sharing features are an alternative for the Public folder links. You can ‘create a shared link’ for any file or folder in your Dropbox. Creating a shared link is similar to using Public folder links, with one key difference: links are not automatically generated."
This misses the entire point. It's like picking your car up from the garage and finding they've broken it so now it has a misfire and them offering you a rail ticket. No, not what I want, please fix the problem.
"We recognize that this change may cause frustration. We want to help you understand your sharing options."
No we want you to explain to us WHY you are REALLY pulling the plug.
The message you MUST take away is you are changing the rules on links already in existance for free and paid for accounts. This is quite simply UNNACEPTABLE however you dress it up.
It's annoying and frustrating to tell us we will not have public folder in the future. If the reason is legal say it's legal, if it's bandwidth, say it's bandwidth, if it's a wish to add advertising, say it's to allow advertising.
Big Company BS does DP no good what so ever, it isn't "new and better" it's a right royal pain in the "£$%.
If you'd said
"look folks, we know the public folder is very popular, but it's causing us real problems and we need to close this, migrating everyone to our alternative, so from date X you'll not be able to add anything to the public folder, but old links will remain in place for the time being" then you wouldn't be getting much if any backlash.
Doing what you've done is a great way to lose customers and get a bad name.
