MSIE was free, 28 years ago in late 1995, and while Netscape did take 5 years to follow suit, by 1998 Netscape was not in a healthy position because of the free competition.

And to a first approximation. No one paid for Netscape then. I first downloaded it free in 1996 from their ftp server.

As someone who worked in this space at the time (Webmaster at Spry, Inc. in 1994), and we sold a web browser in the 1994-ish timeframe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBox, no, saying "almost 3 decades" isn't hyperbolic at all. 29 years is close enough.