EDIT: But I'm probably an outlier.
I've heard it's nice, I think it's essential IE files and wine slapped into a pretty package - but I've also heard/seen that you can have several versions of IE for testing stuff out. Might.. be nice. I dunno.
Microsoft wants IE to be different because they hope that eventually companies will decide it's not worth the cost to support or utilize the technologies that have smaller marketshare.
For a while, this worked with IE and there were large swaths of the web inaccessible through other browsers. Recently, it hasn't been working as well and in fact has been backfiring as frustration with Internet Explorer mounts and developers shy away from supporting it, or imbue it with lesser features, which is why IE is much more compatible than it used to be, but still not _quite_ there.
This strategy still works well in other areas and has been part of Microsoft's philosophy for many years -- see the Halloween memos for more.
Microsoft really has no incentive to continue Internet Explorer _except_ control. They leverage it to try to make Windows a requirement to browse the web, which would render OS X, Linux, and any other potential competitors comparatively useless for desktops. That's the mission and goal of Internet Explorer.
Are you implying MS are purposely breaking IE in order to sell Windows licences to web developers? How many licenses exactly do you think are on the line here?