Not even close. IE did things like include directx filters (which obviously need directx to work), activex, choose a non-standard box-model (which webdevs might

Not even close. IE did things like include directx filters (which obviously need directx to work), activex, choose a non-standard box-model (which webdevs might choose these days, but back then there was no choice) and many, many more things. I don't like chrome and especially on the privacy front it's bad but they usually try to make sure that their features are at least technically adoptable by other platforms. We don't have to call a browser "the new IE" to argue against their anti-features.