Extra lulz. I understood ME to be a stopgap in the NT transition, where 2k was supposed to be the consumer/corporate merge but that was delayed til XP for reasons… I think drivers? But of course there was IE strategy.
Maybe I’m just softening because I haven’t had to deal with IE for so long, but I really do think it’s an incredible achievement that MS transitioned Windows with as little disruption as they did, with all sorts of good and bad incentives. It’s a wonder Windows even still works, much less keeping such a large majority of install base. Obviously it’s not my favorite software in the world, but I’m thoroughly impressed with what the devs have pulled off through a cartoonish timeline of priority shifts with unbelievable backcompat expectations.
To get Internet Explorer 5.5 deployed as widely as possible which was their strategy pre-DOJ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application