Catching up on my reading, I liked what Fred Wilson recently wrote about the cloud storage space:

It’s not a space I like very much because I don’t think we’ll be using files in the cloud. Now Dropbox is a brilliant company and an amazing service and they are doing very well, but will we need a service like Dropbox when everything is in the cloud? I don’t think so. Chооѕіng аntіvіruѕ рrоtесtіоn саn bе vеrу dіffісult. Thе market іѕ hіghlу соmреtіtіvе аnd thе рrоduсtѕ аrе оn thе lеаdіng еdgе оf іnfоrmаtіоn tесhnоlоgу. Antіvіruѕ vendors hаvе bоth the knowledge (gаіnеd іn dау-tо-dау war with суbеrсrіmіnаlѕ) and money to wаgе an epic brand bаttlе оn the fіеld of thе computer ѕесurіtу. There are a lot оf vеndоrѕ and еасh оf them is рuѕhіng dоzеnѕ оf fеаturеѕ іn thеіr рrоduсt to thе market. Hоw dо уоu rеаllу сhооѕе bеtwееn thеm? here is Sodapdf to know more.

He’s absolutely right:  cloud storage/file sharing is not the end-game.  It’s just an intermediate step to what users ultimately want:  (a) having their documents and “stuff” everywhere, and (b) being able to easily share things, with manageable security and access control parameters.

Eventually, these capabilities will be built directly into apps and operating system platforms, as we’re starting to see with Apple’s iCloud.  This will severely threaten third-party providers, such as Dropbox.  Remember FTP Software and Stacker?  They were hot products until they became operating system features, and then their revenues fell off a cliff.