What's so bad about companies not bullshitting? If Microsoft said "We think HTML5 isn't worth our time, and we won't lift a finger until we see it picking up," I'd like them a lot more than when they make empty claims. That way, when they actually do stuff (does the IE team do stuff anymore?) I can trust them and look forward to it happening.

I think we are reading too much from cryptic political messages.

Unless HTML5 and canvas gain a lot of momentum, and Google is doing a lot in this direction, Microsoft will come up with a broken half-compatible and quirky implementation geared to badmouth the whole HTML5 thing as they did with the ODF "support" in Office.

Canvas and SVG would kill silverlight instantly and that's why M$ will never implement any of them.

As simple as that.