For much of the early 2000’s, IE was the only decent browser.

That is a subject statement, many people I knew preferred Netscape and then Phoenix.

I used Netscape through 4.x, up until 2000 or so. It took years before Phoenix / Firebird / Firefox was considered "stable" (I'd say Firefox 2.0?) There was a solid 4 or 5 years there where IE was your only real choice. Apple was even shipping IE with the Mac!

I find it hard to imagine anyone preferred Netscape 4.x to IE 5 and 5.5. I think even IE6 may have existed before Netscape 6, though I definitely made the switch to Phoenix as soon as I discovered it.

I certainly did. I used a lot of features in Netscape that IE never had, and at university it was _the_ browser used on campus in the late 90s.

IE 5 was a buggy browser lacking a lot of features, but was used often by people not building things online. And forced on people by bizarre site requirements. Though this came worse with IE6.

Microsoft was embroiled in legal issues of their browser at this time, and anyone with a sense of logic (most programmers) could see being locked into one piece of software instantly degrades the value of that software.

Sept 2002 was when Phoenix was released.[0]

IE 6 came out only a year before Phoenix.[1] And you if you were involved with Slashdot back in the day you were tracking browser usage as a daily trend. Phoenix was doing well.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6

IE had over 70% marketshare through 2005. In 2002, right after IE 6 was released, it was 85%. Everything else was in the weeds. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/neil.the.analyst/viz/...

The difference from now is that back then there was an army of dedicated tech oriented people that _knew_ MS and IE were a problem that needed to be resisted.

I knew tech oriented people, myself included, that used a Windows desktops for a few years because the other browser alternatives were unacceptably bad.

Sure. As someone who had to build sites for both, IE was far superior. Vague css support and it didn’t crash if you nested tables more than seven layers deep.