Once they killed Netscape, they literally disbanded the IE team. They also did anti-competitive shit like buy and slow-roll Hotmail to protect the golden goose. (enterprise EAs of windows and office + oem licensing.)
They are doing the same thing today with identity and security for enterprises.
Chrome is Google’s attempt at a first party solution stack. It’s weird though as chrome is owned by different teams in Google than other user facing products.
Tied to Windows, mind you.
Unless you count reframed Chromium as "other browser", the equivalent of using Microsoft's IE-based WebBrowser component back in the day.
I really don't see much of a difference.
Not that that was a bad thing though. As mentioned it is a really bad idea to auto download code off some random website and execute it. Naive we all were back then...
Microsoft isn’t run by dumb people.
I find that dubious. Do you have any sources for that?
First link on a google search confirms all this
https://www.quora.com/What-strategic-thinking-persuaded-Micr...