So what is the cloud protocol? I'm not sure this guy even understands what a cloud is. Email messages all look the same (headers, then message) and they were mostly transferred on SMTP. How would anyone possibly interconnect AWS and Rackspace? Dropbox and Let's Crate? etc.
I think his point was mostly that pressure would eventually cause different cloud services to allow intermingling of functionality. For instance, editing a document on a Google storage service though Microsoft's webapp, or vise versa, without having to manually move stuff over.
I'm skeptical though. Companies always find some excuse to prevent the customer from using other companies products.
That is why I mentioned common format (headers + message) and 'mostly' SMTP.
But for early email, allowing users to email someone at a different computer wasn't an issue of profit.
'Cloud' companies don't want you to use another company's products. Google doesn't want your docs stored on Dropbox. That issue didn't exist with email, and if you look at something like Facebook messages, you can't send a message from a Facebook account to a Myspace (or whatever else) account.
That, more than anything else, is going to inhibit 'cloud' growth.
