IE6 becoming standards non compliant was deliberate. Not because MS lost interest in the web. And IE6 becoming stagnant was a result of MS's deliberate attempt

IE6 becoming standards non compliant was deliberate. Not because MS lost interest in the web. And IE6 becoming stagnant was a result of MS's deliberate attempt to bake IE6 into the OS itself, which made it a ridiculously complex piece of software to change safely. Again, not because MS lost interest in the web, but because MS thought they could use their ownership of the desktop OS to own the web, rather than by innovating through a web browser. And frankly, if it wasn't for the EU they may even have succeeded. You can already see how they would have done that with some of their actions today, where opening a link from a Windows search will open the link in Edge irrespective of what your default browser is, etc. If it wasn't for the EU antitrust ruling forcing them to separate IE from Windows I suspect their actions to push IE6 would have been even more aggressive.