>> MSIE? Dominates the world.
IE did dominate the world. Remember Netscape? IE was at like 90% in the early 2000's until Firefox showed up.
>> Java? Completely unknown
Never made much of an impact on the desktop. What's the most widely used Java desktop app? Was there ever one? Eclipse/Netbeans comes to mind.
For a brief period. So did many other short-term phenomena, from BASIC to MS Access to Clipper to Pacman. And now they are stuff for the museums. Except for Pacman, of course.
> Never made much of an impact on the desktop
So? It still survived competition with Microsoft - and, arguably, won on every platform except Windows, non-Windows .net use is still basically zero and Linux rules server world, so...
> What's the most widely used Java desktop app?
I honestly have no idea. Well, Eclipse of course, IntelliJ suite of tools, probably, but it could be some other apps are Java too and I just don't know it. The point is Java is alive and well despite competition from mighty invincible Microsoft.
Ironic, because these are just Java IDEs.