Collateral damages

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More browsers war victims? Tantek Çelik, software development lead of Microsoft's HTML engine for the Mac and primary representative to W3C CSS working group and HTML working group, commenting on Eric Meyer's options after AOL killed Netscape, hints us on his own fate at Microsoft:

Eric added yesterday that he has to decide whether he will accept the position into which he was reassigned, turn down the reassignment and look for another position within AOL or decide to take the severance package and leave AOL altogether.

I've been presented with a similar, albeit less clearly delineated, set of choices.

Tantek also comes back on the end of IE/Mac:

Just over a month ago I found out about the End of development for Mac Internet Explorer (which, as I've clarified to folks, does/did not mean the end of development for the Tasman rendering engine, at least not yet, which has been largely developed in a string of TV related groups outside the Mac Business Unit since shortly after IE5/Mac shipped).

At least not yet? Let say it does not suggest the death of everything HTML on Microsoft's Mac software, but frankly, reassigning a key developer and W3C representative does not suggest a clear commitment to innovate on the HTML front from Microsoft. And that is my point, where is Microsoft regarding browser innovation?