I understand where you are coming from about about Google going head on with IE. The fact that Chrome was released in Windows first rather than for Mac, Google’s traditional ally, and now is talking about using Active X in Korea is pretty indisputable in that regard.

Going on what you’ve written it all seems a bit like MS is doing what it can to secure it’s position in the rise of competition from Firefox, Opera, Safari and now Chrome. Personally I think more browsers out there for the user and more choice will hopefully mean that IE will be diluted somewhat however the grip IE has on business and also in Asia is a pretty big one.

One thing that annoys me is that Microsoft have Active-X embedded in their important information sites, like MSDN
subscription sites, so you’re forced to use IE to navigate these sites, Microsoft also refuse to make their downloads cross browser compatible because they say that all their users are IE users. Well no *** Microsoft.

Even MS tech forums that use Ajax, seem to be developed for IE only, do if you’re a Microsoft developer, it gets really annoying having to switch back from using better Browsers to using IE to access certain sites.