Yes it is. I watched the story unfold as someone who'd already been using the WWW for a year or so.
I see you are a hardcore MS hater (the kind that is willing to make up stories).
The old adage isn't true, when you make assumptions, you only make an ass out of yourself. As recently as a few years ago I was recommending IE to people using Netscape because Netscape was the inferior product. I have no company loyalty.
You may be able to put pretty pictures into FrontPage and hit Publish, but if you don't know by experience how badly IE renders the standards then you're not really a web developer.
Bill Gates never made the statement you claimed he did.
It was not an assumption - you demonstrated it in your actions.
IE is currently the standard. If you don't understand that, I am certain you are not really a web developer.