Dropbox confirms it's been secretly working on a Google Docs and Evernote killer

Last Friday, a myterious product called Project Composer made its way to Product Hunt, the suddenly trendy online community where a lot of new products are getting shared and discovered.

Composer, which looks like an online word processor similar to Evernote and Google Docs, was available very briefly before users had access cut off multiple reports said.

According to people who tried it, Composer is a note-taking tool that allows for multiple users to edit and share files simultaneously. It would allow Dropbox users to create and edit documents on the spot, without having to do the work on a separate word processor before saving it on Dropbox.

It was pretty clear that Dropbox accidentally leaked its secret project, as it was hosted on the Dropbox.com domain and required a Dropbox account to sign in. The company declined to comment on it last week.

But when we talked to Ilya Fushman, Dropbox's head of product, business and mobile, on Monday, he confirmed that Composer is one of the new products it's been testing lately.

"We're always testing new products. We always have a bunch of stuff we're working on - and this is one of them," Fushman told Business Insider.

"We're excited it's got us on Product Hunt. I think you'll see us come out with some other stuff in that space," he added.

But Fushman declined to offer a specific timeline for Composer. He said Dropbox usually tests its new products with thousands of customers before officially releasing it, to make sure it has the right market fit.  

For example, Badge, a new feature that allows users to see who's working on the same file within Dropbox, was tested by more than 13,000 business partners before its official release last month.

"We want people to use them and get feedback," Fushman said. "We might find out that people don't like it." 

Document editing and collaboration is a space Dropbox has been focused on lately. Just about a year ago, it acquired Hackpad, a startup that made a simiilar software to Composer. It also acquired mobile document editing software CloudOn earlier this year.

Here's what Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt tweeted on Friday: