Considering that Chromeeffects(or Chrome, a way for browsers to use DirectX and have client hardware handle multimedia so bandwidth was saved) never got released, I doubt people claimed that.

Don't we have other examples in our lives where we pay for a service and still get advertisements? I have Sirius radio that is "ad free", but I still manage to spend a third of my time listening to ads. I see plenty of advertisements at the movie theater (ads for non-movie related items), and same thing on Directv. Adding advertisements to XBL and PSN are a logical progression for online gaming. Maybe the ads will allow MS to keep the price of Gold the same, or enhance other services. I don't necessarily like advertisements, but it won't cause me to leave the service. The bottom line as a consumer, you have the choice of cancelling the service if you don't like what it offers.

My guess is that you weren't at SIGGRAPH 98 at which it was presented as the MS alternative to flash. I still have the chrome meditation balls they were handing out somewhere.

So a demonstration at a conference to gather developer support == release?  Due to bad feedback(high hardware requirements) and a change of ownership, Chrome was put to pasture before it saw the light of day.  So my question to you would be, how could someone make the comment "If you think Chrome is going anywhere, you are mistaken.", when in fact it was no where?  I guess you could say they were correct, because it actually did not go anywhere.

So a demonstration at a conference to gather developer support == release?

This is usually how dev tools are released. Perma-beta for many MS products was the norm in those days (think gmail), although it's possible my perspective is colored by the fact that I worked for a MS partnered firm and as part of the terms of the partnership we had to be constantly running their latest beta software.

So my question to you would be, how could someone make the comment "If you think Chrome is going anywhere, you are mistaken.", when in fact it was no where?

Someone could -- and many did -- make that statement because it was aparent that MS put a lot of money and effort into it's public release and MS was a company with near unlimited resources. Many MS only devs have a fatalist philosiphy (this is not as strong these days, especially after Vista) which states that, "If you don't switch to MS's latest tools now, you're skill set will become out of date".

But fine you don't believe what I say about ChromeFX. How about Liquid motion or Vizact?

While I had heard of ChomeEffects(never heard it referred to as ChomeFX), I have never heard of Liquid Motion or Vizact. But after looking into both, it is quite obvious there are several distinctions to be made between their collapse and Silverlight.

Those two never had much support or adoption. Silverlight is doing quite well in both of those areas.

Silverlight already has a nice enough following for developers to support it, and since version 3, it has near feature parity with Flash and some advantages(one being C# is better than ActionScript 3). The only negative that is usually brought against it, is that Flash is almost ubiquitous, why use Silverlight. This is why my company decided on Flex.

1. Who cares if its not complete. The spec as is has some amazing features.

2. I know it isnt going to be released soon... which is why I said by the time IE9 will be out which I doubt will be released till late 2010.

3. I know it doesn't. Just like Silverlight really has nothing to do with HTML. It is a reference to features provided by the software. IE Java's ability to present video.

4. IE DOES NOT CONTROL 60% OF THE MARKET.

1.  That was mostly going against your thoughts that HTML 6 will be out before IE9.

2.  The first draft of HTML 5 was released in Jan 2008, so it was worked on for a while before that.  It isn't even completed and you expect them to roll out a competely new spec within a year and a half?

3.  Point me to a site using Java to display video.  I rarely, rarely, rarely see applets used for anything these days.  Why exactly are you saying HTML 5 > Silverlight/Flash?  Ease of use?  No vendor lock in?

4.  http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0&qpmr=15&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qpcal=1&qptimeframe=Q&qpsp=41, then again, these things are pretty inaccurate.

I see what MS are doing here, they are getting money from adverts so they can provide a free online expireience. Good for them.