They were not as good at bending standards groups to their will as Google has been, for various reasons, which is why standards did not always match their proposed implementations. But trying to paint IE as not engaged in standards is pretty misleading.
(Now I don't think they were too engaged in things like XHTML2, but neither was any other browser, because that group was fundamentally not interested in browsers being engaged, as far as I can tell.)
TBH I think if you want a slogan then "Google is the new AOL" is better. When you look at what their doing across technologies it looks more like reinventing AOL's walled browser for the modern age.
I'm old enough. It's not different. Chrome is the new IE.
I'm old enough. People sharing your view, are agreeing with a broad assumption that isn't based in reality. Ironically, the Chrome has had to adopt from the other direction (webasm) and hasn't created much whole-cloth that other browsers have had to adopt...and developer's certainly aren't hambstringed by these small additions that make Chrome a delight (for now). From a business perspective, the popularity monopoly is not the same as how IE was made "popular". It's VERY different from the old days in terms of quality and the state of the industry.
Can you show any examples of these "features" that are forcing the hand of other browsers?
> think Outlook.com and the introduction of AJAX
https://www.sitepoint.com/xmlhttprequest-vs-the-fetch-api-wh...
I remember that every browser had an AJAX API, where IE had a specific API that was more straightforward. The AJAX capability was a forgone conclusion rather than a technical leapfrog. You could always had access to an HTML request and timers to code AJAX as a final backup.
"This website supports Netscape Navigator 4."
Browser incompatibility was used to lock entire enterprises into using only Internet Explorer. Badges did nothing to help.
The only thing it seemed to do was let you know what browser the developer/s were using.
If you happened to have multiple browsers it was possibly of some benefit if you could switch to that browser.
Enterprises still lock users to one browser if possible for security & maintenance reasons. I do see multiple browsers allowed for certain individuals to support older software.
It's a bit of a monopoly that Google has on the browser market and so now they have leverage over what gets approved and implemented in those browsers.
Since most people use Chrome then other browsers are forced to follow suit with compatibility.
Link to chromium dev: https://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel
Neither am I, but I wanted to point it out anyway. If things like chromium-dev had existed back then, maybe we wouldn't have had the IE fiasco we all remember. Or maybe we would have anyway, who can tell :)