Wow! Are you actually suggesting they try and hold back the development of the web for another 5-10 years, if they can pull it off?
"Just make everything about websites IE-specific again and we're all good!"
I am fully supportive of open standards, but it's rare that companies together can develop one. The year 2019 I mentioned was wrong, the final specification of HTML 5 is planned for 2022. Even after half the spec has thrown out already.
So MS has to go back at what they did best. Embrace and extent. Make the existing specifications work, but add more (useful) functions. Such as 3D, printing documents or a real rich text editor. The other browser developers are already doing such, so if MS wants to stay significant, they will have to do something.
No matter when it's deemed "finished", HTML5 is coming along nicely. It feels like you can already start using it a little, and after some time, all browsers that matter (which might not even include IE anymore) will support HTML5 & CSS3 well enough that you can actually use them.
That's really cool, and Microsoft has done absolutely nothing to make that happen - quite the contrary.
They were pretty much refusing to co-operate for as long as possible, naturally, and when they realized that the IT world wasn't going to wait for them anymore, that they had become irrelevant, only then did they actually do something to support standards.
Make the existing specifications work, but add more (useful) functions.
That's not an implementation of a standard anymore. In fact, even the browser-specific way Safari and Firefox have approached CSS3 is really weird - why not just freaking use the names that are going to be used eventually anyway? It makes no sense.
You can't support MS adding their own proprietary shit on top of open standards just because they happened to produce XHR while doing exactly that.
The other browser developers are all coming around to implementing HTML5 and CSS3, and if MS wants to stay in the game, right now they actually have to do the same, as they've apparently realized. If they had the choice, they'd be doing everything in their power to fuck everything up and make the world depend on IE once again - you can count on that.
So please, stop the misguided MS-love.