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Hmm conspiracy theory... Nope, Microsoft is a for-profit company with a huge platform that might be slipping into irrelevance.

They're playing the cards they have at any given time - when it means supporting standards, they do that. And when they're totally dominant, they tend to set the standards.

I'm not even suggesting it might be intentional - the IE team and the MS top management don't necessarily have the same long-term goals is all.

Maybe the IE team would even love to go cross platform and compete as a browser and not as a part of a larger platform.

Unfortunately it's a bit more than a theory. In a real, documented sense, it has been Microsoft's modus operandi with regard to internet technology for over 15 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

It's not a conspiracy theory, it's exactly what happened with IE6.

You can debate whether IE6 was a good or bad thing in this regard, but it still happened.