This might come as a surprise but not everyone sees the world from a "freedom" perspective. In terms of practical/day to day experience we won something that works over something that didn't.
I agree with you, but think that there are different definitions of freedom. I love open source software but I don't think it's a right or that all software should be OSS. I like the freedom to keep the source of my apps closed if I wish. If I choose to use a closed source browser, I'm not giving up any freedom in my mind, I'm making a choice and a deal.
It's not a "freedom" perspective. Once you get an overlord, it's just a matter of time until it starts abusing you.
Or, in other words, it's just a matter of time until it's Chrome keeping you up at night eating all of your productivity to avoid some defect. It probably won't be a rendering bug, but there will be something there.
IE "worked" too. The main problems came from having to develop for multiple browsers with incompatible implementations. If you restricted yourself to IE, it was quite painless. Any quirk you'd encounter daily was documented, and at the time there were quirks in all implementations anyway.
It does not come as a surprise but saddening, because freedom is the most important thing in life
With out freedom life is miserable, and it saddens me that people seem to be valuing freedom less and less, one day they will look around and ask "how did we get here", and people like me will just shrug and say "you should have listened"