http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914 - Bing copying Google. Microsoft are a farse. The only reason most people use them is because most people do. There aren't the same amount of programs/applications for Linux or Mac.
But since they've been failing in the search engine market, that the best move they have done for a long time. There is an equivalent program for most Windows programs. The only reason Microsoft are so dominant is that the vast majority of PCs come with the Windows OS and people are also used to it. Mac OS is slightly different; Linux is excellent although very user unfriendly.
And that will soon change. HP just announced they will be using webOS on notebooks, desktops, and mobile devices. ChromeOS will be out on many devices soon. The move away from Windows, which I predicted two years ago, has started.
I totally agree IE is very poor in performance and sometimes it hangs maybe they should stick on developing there OS better instead of of competing with other things that they're not good at.