It wasn't so much IE in itself but the IE/Frontpage/ActiveX trinity they managed to make synonymous with enterprise for a while. It was a nasty time to work in

It wasn't so much IE in itself but the IE/Frontpage/ActiveX trinity they managed to make synonymous with enterprise for a while. It was a nasty time to work in the Internet space, especially for a web developer. They did a lot of other strange things as well. I know Microsoft people showed up to at least one IETF working group pretending to be interested in doing standards work, only to return later having patented key points of the standard, saying they weren't interested anymore. So IE was just a small part of that famous strategy, even if it was a central piece. But the bundling was never much of an issue unless you were a direct competitor. The only reason that's what people remember is the court case was widely reported in media at the time.