At that time there were basically 3 browsers to choose from. IE, Netscape, and in some particular cases Mosaic (which no one really did anymore). Out of those

At that time there were basically 3 browsers to choose from. IE, Netscape, and in some particular cases Mosaic (which no one really did anymore). Out of those 3 one did not crash as much, was faster, and was already installed. Before Firefox, Netscape would crash if you looked at it wrong. Netscape started off decent but quickly devolved into something just as bad of a mess as IE. That was our choices as a consumer. So we worked with what we had. It was not until Firefox came along and showed everyone 'hey there is a better way' that anything happened. Even that took a few years.