Highest Rated Comments


dereksnyder62 karma

Few reasons:

1.) Over 80% of our active users were only using Dashlane in the browser. Turns out they would go to the desktop app mostly when something went wrong (e.g. our autofill wasn't good enough which is our problem, not theirs)

2.) It was slowing us down from developing new features in a timely manner. We are releasing much faster now that we have a single code base for all our desktop users.

3.) In the last few years, we have really grown our B2B business, and it is much easier for IT admins to preinstall a browser extension than a desktop app (along with all the end user training, etc.).

We've worked hard to build all the functionality from the desktop app into our web app. Is there something in particular missing that I should know about?

dereksnyder43 karma

Great point, actually. We have published a white paper about our security model (https://www.dashlane.com/download/Dashlane_SecurityWhitePaper_March2021.pdf), have public patents about our zero-knowledge architecture (https://patents.justia.com/assignee/dashlane-sas) , and are indeed looking at ways we can provide more transparency about how our apps are built.

dereksnyder29 karma

The brief history on this is that when we were moving from the desktop app to a web app + extension as our desktop offering, there were a number of features that needed to be ported over. We prioritized the order based on two dimensions: how much each missing feature is used and how much effort it would take our engineering team to rebuild them. Emergency was one of those really tough features because it was only activated by a very small number of our users (<5%) and also VERY expensive to migrate (we hadn't touched the feature for a long time so there was a lot of tech debt). I made the decision to sunset the desktop apps without having Emergency ready, which meant the feature would be no longer available.

To build Emergency the right way, we are going to build it on top of our Sharing features (the codebase has really diverged), and so that's why there's such a long delay in bringing it back. To be very candid, we are going to focus on building some new Sharing capabilities first before moving on to what will ultimately be Emergency's successor.

I know this is very disappointing to you since you have come to rely on Dashlane for this. All I can say is that it's on me and it was not an easy decision to make. In the interim, we have posted a workaround that involves exporting data that some of our customers have found useful.

dereksnyder26 karma

I'd love to share but it's too sad a story. We had to send him out to live on a "farm".

dereksnyder22 karma

Yeah, that's right -- our co-founders are French. In the before times, I was there every other week or so. Now I go about once a month, and also when I need some decent bread. And yes, I'm based in New York.