As time goes on, software, like all other media, is becoming increasingly corporate and large scale. Multi-million dollar products fight for limited store shelf space with massive advertising budgets. It's huge, cold, and business-like, and, to be honest, there's nothing wrong with that.
Software is a major, grown-up thing now.
The world relies on it, and things need to be done in a serious, large scale, systematic way. The problem with this, however, is that the little guy and the small company tend to get squeezed out. Well, a large company, with 2 million dollars riding on each product, is not going to look at you until you have many years of programming and design experience. There's too much at stake for them, and they would be insane to trust a major product to an unknown. This is where shareware comes in.