It was frequently said that /at the time of release/ ie6 was better and more standards compliant than the other web browsers. Then it was left to rot for years.
Perhaps notably, it was actually faster and had lower memory usage than Firefox for a while (Firefox had many leaks). The issues were security, standards and NO TABS!
... Honestly if MS hadn't been so unbelievably deaf to users and web developers, Firefox and Chrome may have never succeeded. If Google doesn't completely screw up, Chrome won't go the way of IE. Maybe messing with adblockers qualifies?
Have these people and the google developers behind Chrome considerd that maybe they are the baddies?