Standards are based on implementation, not invention. In most cases, standards committees do not invent anything on their own and, in fact, HTML5 will not be finalized until there are at least two complete implementations.

That's "embrace, extend, extinguish" and, as anonymous said, Firefox and Chrome are implementing standards, nothing proprietary.

Failed to communicate? I knew this was coming many, many months ago and it's been talked about all over the web so why is this news to anyone?

Sorry but, no, IE7 is NINE YEARS behind web standards and NINE YEARS behind EVERY other browser. As a web developer, I can say IE7 is better than IE6 ever was but it is still the only browser we have to hack for, generally. While there are minor differences in how other browsers react to different elements, we can usually code using Firefox or Opera, for example, and reasonably expect it to work everywhere EXCEPT IE7. It's almost a certainty some 'adjustments' (read hacks) will need to be done to get standard code to work there, if it can work at all. IE7 is still the worst browser on the planet.