FF and IE still vary greatly in their CSS interpretation. My view is that you can get away with alot more (when it comes to none standard code) in IE. Will I ever move to IE as a browser - doubtful as a non windows user it's highly unlikely Oh, what an amazing thought, we'll all jump back to IE when it gets tabbed browsing - not likely. Why should I move to a browser which can't be bother to inovate anymore. IE is the domainant browser simply because it comes as part of windows. Over time you will see the IE market share decrease - watch this space.
Also because you probably build them for IE, or learned how to build from people who built for IE, then you look at it in FF and it looks messed up because IE has gone out of it's way to break standards in many cases Look at the whole Microsoft vs Sun java debacle... same thing really. Any standard that comes out, or is being worked on, microsoft finds a way to incorporate it, but change it just enough so it won't work right with anything else. Not that FF is perfect... i think it's just more standards compliant, often times if you run CSS validator and html validator over your code and fix the error, firefox, konqueror, safari, etc... will all work right, but IE will not. (This reminds me a lot of the frontpage discussion... I'm sure someone will be over here in a minute demanding we all recognize the glory and power of the almighty microsoft and it's carefully crafted products.)
I build my sites for IE because that's what the majority of users are using. It'd be better to make them compatible in both but I don't know how. If FF gets any more market share, I'll have to hire people to redesign all my sites.
Google is just the name of one of THE PLAYERS. Others are MS, yahoo, e-bay (with paypal and skype), ... And there should be a ballance on the market. If Google starts supporting FF, then somebody else will pay more attention to IE... I just hope that one of the players will support Opera. It can be Yahoo or e-bay for example. Opera is worth being browser no 1
IE already has tabs in its 7 beta. And do not forget that Opera had these tabs long before the FF was even born.
I don't know how you have FF set up, but I use paypal w/ FF all the time w/o any problems whatsoever.
I also Dont see any problem with FF May be MS will start Marketing IE with Yahoo after the Launch of MSN and Yahoo Combi Messenger.