You weren't on the web back then were you? It seems pretty obvious from this that you weren't. IE was not a bad product. It beat Netscape on both technical and commercial merit.
It's almost like you would rather still be paying for web browser software today. Would you?
I've been on "the web" since Usenet on real Unix machines in college. I was rummaging around gopher servers on Linux. I had a SLIP dial-in account using Trumpet Winsock on WfWG. I had a DSL line hosting a video sharing site out of my house in '96. Heck, I ran IE on Solaris x86 for awhile. And, yet, somehow, it's "obvious" to you that I wasn't "on the web back then?" Uh. Wow. No, I was never on ARPANet, but, sheesh. I don't usually expect that sort of thing from HN, but I guess times are changing.
It's almost like you would rather still be paying for web browser software today. Would you?