I don't think it's a grand nefarous plan. They just thought that they made it. That all the revolutions of desktop browsing (or PDA OSes) are over, and what th

I don't think it's a grand nefarous plan. They just thought that they made it. That all the revolutions of desktop browsing (or PDA OSes) are over, and what they have to do until the end of eternity is introducing small evolutionary changes while preserving reverse compatibility. And that they did. But they were wrong, browsing revolution happened which left IE6, 7 and partially 8 in the dust. Mobile happened, which made them throw away all the Windows Mobile and make it from scratch. They were not ready to innovate by writing heroic projects fast and tried to persuade market that glacial is okay from now.