Both stories are correct. IE was far ahead of its time in the beginning, bringing us advancements like XmlHttpRequest which set the stage for websites to becom

Both stories are correct. IE was far ahead of its time in the beginning, bringing us advancements like XmlHttpRequest which set the stage for websites to become webapps. Eventually though the entire team behind it was disbanded and dissolved into other divisions, which let the technical debt accumulate into the eventual mess. What made it so bad is that web technologies started to progress faster and faster, constantly building pressure on IE to adapt, but it just couldn't be made to work across all of the integrations with Windows, plugins like ActiveX, historic compatibility promises, enterprise policies, and newer rendering stacks used by Firefox and Chrome. Perhaps they should've retired several years earlier or brought out Edge sooner, but the IE story has both a terrific rise and a crazy fall.