[psim1]

IE may have been problematic from a tech point of view, but I'll eulogize that IE was important in advancing the web. The OS-integrated browser meant that in 1995, users had a full Internet stack readily available on their home PCs -- the widespread launch of Web 1.0. Later, IE was the pioneer of XMLHttpRequest, the beginning of Web 2.0. For these, we can say thanks, Microsoft! (for everything else, see other comments)

[warning26]

People often forget that in the IE4 days, IE was leagues beyond Netscape. It had far better CSS and JS support, and you could do things that wouldn't be possible in Netscape for years.

That said, it all came to an end after Microsoft "won" and disbanded the IE dev team, resulting in that era of stagnation we all remember.

[anthk]

> users had a full Internet stack readily available on their home PCs

No.