I agree 100%
The differences between browsers are small - yet sometimes the small differences make nasty problems (small spacing problems that hose an entire screen).
My point all along was it is ludicrous to think a new free browser is going to knock MS off their pedestal. I am also not arguing the superiority of IE - just that most content is targeted toward IE and for a browser to make an impact it will have to be just like IE (and most likely better) therefore how the heck can a free browser that renders like IE knock MS off of anything.
My company (and most others) only support IE. Not because it the best ever written but because the vast majority of uses use it and we can not afford to support multiple browsers (at least we can not justify the cost - this can easily change if the market demands it. This does not mean it will not work in other browsers.
Your first statement is right on - MS wants to integrate all their products in some way - they got very rich off this strategy - the problem is there is a dark side to the strategy.
Will another browser become the dominant browser - maybe and I think it might actually be good for MS. My point is another browser will not hurt MS and it might actually help them. I believe it might be time for MS to abandon the extensibility model for IE or maybe create two browsers (one that does not integrate). I have written applications that incorporate the browser and they are pretty cool but it opens up lots of possibilities for hacking.
I can't remember if it was up this thread or on another I said it, but I don't think IE will drop below 2/3 of the market. It's got the two most important bundles for the market: Windows, and AOL. And obviously IE isn't going to stop being bundled in Windows, and AOL never seemed to even seriously contemplate unbundling IE even after they bought Netscape (always wondered if MS paid them off somewhere in that). As long as IE keeps those bundles they will have the majority of the market, but if the other third of the market coalesces around 1 browser (which ever, doesn't matter) the industry will start having to do dual support again. Which from where I sit sucks, I hate having to test things twice, I don't like having to test our server on 2K and 2K3, and I don't want to have to start testing our web client on IE and something else. Of course if the other third of the market get spread out between 3 or more browsers coding will be able to stay IE-centric. Which, of course, was the whole goal, to functionally replace the W3C standard with a standard owned by MS, there are few things in this world Bill Gates hates more than popular standards controlled by somebody else.