>>It surprises me how people jump up and down and scream and yell that something from Microsoft is dead because some Microsoft didn't say anything about it.
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>>.NET is not dead.
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>Just not nearly as important as many developers thought it once was. MS is moving to open standards just like the rest of the industry (no matter how much they don't really want to).

Just because they are moving to open standards does not mean that they are minifying the .NET platform. AJAX calls are going to need some sort of backend, and .NET is a great option. ASP.NET MVC emphasizes AJAX calls and have integrated it nearly seamlessly. HTML5 is not going to easily cover every rich UI scenario which makes Silverlight relevant.