If Microsoft made ActiveX open and easy for other browser manufactures to implement in a cross-platform manner, I would absolutely have been in support of it. They didn't, so I wasn't.

Standards bodies move slowly. Non-standardised innovation across browsers is absolutely to be encouraged, as long as it is done in a manner that allows others to implement that innovation too. This sort of innovation is what helps us decide what is worth being made into a standard.

ActiveX and Flash were certainly innovations. One of them didn't pan out[1] and the other did and lasted for quite some time.

You realize that if not for Flash, sites like Youtube wouldn't have been possible at the time that it was released?

[1] ActieX didn't pan out for the web as a whole - it fared well behind the walls of enterprises.

Maybe not ActiveX, but when Microsoft created XMLHttpRequest in their javascript engine, that ended up being pretty significant and great for how the web works today.