Microsoft also was forced by the EU to offer a browser choice in a fresh install of Windows. At least in Europe this probably offered a lot of visibility to alt

Microsoft also was forced by the EU to offer a browser choice in a fresh install of Windows. At least in Europe this probably offered a lot of visibility to alternative web browsers. Also IE felt years behind the competition and the situation isn't even remotely comparable to Safari. It seems like the Safari team made some efforts to catch up. While they aren't at the same point as Firefox or Chromium they did catch up a little bit over the last year. The situation with IE was completely different. Microsoft used IE to push proprietary standards like ActiveX and it felt like there wasn't really a active development team for Internet Explorer or that Microsoft IE wasn't a priority. The first thing isn't true for Safari and while it feels like Safari wasn't a priority for Apple they announced making more of an effort if I remember correctly and if they don't Safari will probably go down the same road as IE.