I have thought for a while Microsoft would have been smart to latch on to Google's Native Client. .NET was something they did reluctantly to combat Java in the

I have thought for a while Microsoft would have been smart to latch on to Google's Native Client. .NET was something they did reluctantly to combat Java in the enterprise space: Their heart and soul has always been in native code (if you don't count the p-code in Office). And .NET has always produced native code out the back, anyway. NaCl in Internet Explorer and later in mobile devices would have let them leverage much of their existing code base and developer tools, all with an "industry standard" imprimatur from Google. And where it wasn't supported (i.e., Firefox), you ship a plugin, which is no worse than Silverlight.