Just because the product still runs on gasoline, has a steering wheel, and puts four tires on the ground, that doesn't mean the industry around the product hasn

Just because the product still runs on gasoline, has a steering wheel, and puts four tires on the ground, that doesn't mean the industry around the product hasn't changed fairly dramatically. It's not a revolutionary change, sure, but honestly, neither is implementing web standards. You're still rendering html, applying css, and executing javascript. As for the point about what constitutes a 'standard', you're just saying there's a difference between an official standard and a de facto standard. I won't dispute that. I don't think that's the story here, though. The story is that IE used to be the de facto standard through merit before growing lazy as hell and losing its technical lead, and that people are increasingly willing to think they can move forward without it. It's been steadily losing market share since 2004, while the web has absolutely exploded in that same time frame. Are you really saying that its a bad bet at this point to not particularly care about IE's attempts to bully the market by not playing nice with the standards the other browsers are agreeing to support?