I think it's a little more than that. Google's core revenue is from advertising. They make a lot of money from their little text ads. Because they have so mu

I think it's a little more than that. Google's core revenue is from advertising. They make a lot of money from their little text ads. Because they have so much of the advertising market, every minute you spend on the web is essentially more revenue for them, and the more pages you view in that minute the more revenue for them. Thus they are happy if you spend more time online. If that means making a better browser so people will be more comfortable on the web and spend less time loading pages, Google gets more revenue. If it means making a good mobile OS so people spend time on the web from their phones, Google gets more revenue. If it means their competitors improve their products to make people happy to spend more time on the web, Google gets more revenue. Improvements to IE is more ad impressions/clicks for Google as people will be inclined to spend more time and visit more sites online. It's not even about IE "running" Google software as much as it is improving the Internet, which is where Google ads display.