I was at the Mono breakout session at PDC 2008. The speaker had nothing but good things to say about Microsoft and the support they have given the Mono team. It was even a Mono breakout session about developing games for the iPhone.

Google will save us with all the dark fiber they own... Right?

TFA doesn't say, but I watched a Channel 9 video and it certainly looks like Silverlight. That means Microsoft supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and IE (on Windows, Moonlight isn't near close enough to Silverlight to do this kind of stuff). I do agree with you that the outlook web application was garbage. But now with Exchange 2010, it is excellent. I was quite pleased when I opened up Outlook 2010 web mail in Chrome and it was completely full featured, even the Office Communicator Client integration worked!