I actually am confused about that.. is there a link explaining how HTML5 in Metro will work? This may just sound cynical, but I have to assume that they are partly trying to set up another way to run more interference on the web platform by encouraging a bunch of Microsoft-specific "HTML5" applications.
I mean I know there must be plenty of people at Microsoft who are genuinely enthusiastic about HTML5 and the web as a platform, but when it comes right down to it, I don't know how the business execs who actually understand the technology issues can really support HTML5 as a common application development platform, because I just don't see how that cannot lead directly to less sales of the operating system and everything else.
I know people on the IE team, and they are genuinely enthusiastic about HTML5 and the web as a platform. In recent years IE pioneered sandboxed tabs, GPU-accelerated rendering engines, and some privacy stuff (that I found incredibly boring but they thought was really important). They didn't need to do that stuff. If Chrome hadn't reignited the browser wars so strongly, I wouldn't be surprised if IE would've been closing in on Firefox quality-wise at this point.
In the time I worked at MS and was able to get the inside scoop on how different product teams work, I found that the cynical explanation was almost never the truth. I can't think of a single person I met at MS who was playing to lose. If the IE team is underdelivering compared to other browser vendors, it's not due to an exec telling them not to try. You would probably be shocked at how difficult it is to ship software at Microsoft, for a variety of reasons, none of them malicious.
