The inability of IE to evolve
My personal feeling is, and has been since I first saw the Web with Mosaic 1.0, that the browser is largely inconsequential in terms of any company's business. If I were to start a new company today, a company that builds Web browsers would not be among my considerations. I've never understood how Microsoft has profited from IE's dominance, or how Netscape back in the day made a buck when you could download the browser for free. Neither company has scored any extra revenue from me, any more than Mozilla has by me using Firefox. The only thing at stake is to say, "ours has more users." That's such a dotcom business plan.
Now of course the Microsoft haters (you know, the tools and morons that refer to the company as "M$," because that dollar sign means capitalism is bad or something) are going to say that they're trying to extend their desktop dominance to the Web. Really? How? Has IE's dominance prevented you from using the Web? There was this long-standing theory that as applications more commonly became Web-based that the browser would be the gateway to those apps, and somehow Microsoft's browser would control it all. That was a stupid theory because it assumes that the Web itself could only be viewed by IE.
If you want to bitch about IE, then by all means complain about the legitimate problems like security and the worst CSS rendering of any browser. Those are things that irritate the crap out of me, and they're the reason I don't use IE anymore.
Despite this, Microsoft is not being harmed by my decision (as a .NET developer, they're obviously getting my money in other ways). In fact, I start to wonder why Microsoft continues to build a browser at all. The one they have doesn't work as it should, there's no sequel in sight, and with XP SP2, there isn't a single reason you need it (Windows Update works on its own, without the browser itself).