Saying that all of those apps are the same is a naive interpretation of the services. There's overlap, but that's because a lot of those products started out with disparate purposes and are now being consolidated (Groove+FolderShare is a large part of the current version of Live Mesh). They're iterating on the same idea and realizing a grander solution, albeit very slowly.
Reminds me of joelonsoftware's recent Architecture Astronauts post.
A relevant quote:
"The hallmark of an architecture astronaut is that they don't solve an actual problem... they solve something that appears to be the template of a lot of problems. Or at least, they try. Since 1988 many prominent architecture astronauts have been convinced that the biggest problem to solve is synchronization."
To say sychronizing files from your PDA to your Ford is the same as sharing folders on the web? That's a bit of a stretch.
Could there be some kind of uber- sharing-synchronization program? Beats me. Seems like there are a lot of market segments and problems. Why would we want one, big, bulky product that does a gazillion different types of synchronization?
You see, Microsoft gets it both ways. They write the product that does everything, people bitch about enterprise apps. If they write a dozen niche products that are somewhat similar, people bitch about duplication.
For me? I'm a big Groove fan, even if they did cut the crap out of the features to make it less competitive with their other stuff.
