I just got a pointer to this blog

http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2008/10/31/microsoft-kills-linq-to-sql.aspx

That's actually a bit dated - but neither the news (nor the reaction) surprises me.

If you look at recent (and even historical) patterns of MS product offerings, what's occuring with L2S is pretty consistent. MS sometimes goes through an iteration or two before they streamline their functionality for a particular area.

It's the same way in the Business Intelligence area: they created business scorecard manager in 2005, then purchased ProClarity technology and then released the next generation of BSM, as PerformancePoint Server, in 2007. Now they are de-listing PPS and incorporating much of PPS into the next release of SharePoint.

While I sympathize with some of the comments on the blog link you posted, there's a part of me that would love to say that this is what can happen when developers jump too far on the first iteration of what they perceive is a magic bullet.