IE4 was head and shoulders above Netscape 4. IE4 is recognizably a modern browser (by introducing .innerHTML), if a very poor one by modern standards; Netscape 4 was hackery on an engine taken way beyond what it could sustain. Netscape require a <i>long</i> time to catch up, and the helping hand Microsoft gave by slowing down dev on IE round about IE6. There was a long window where IE was the best browser by pretty much every measure and I&#x27;m pretty sure it overlapped this lawsuit, though my brain and the calendar don&#x27;t always get along perfectly.<p>You can argue that IE was that good due to Microsoft being able to leverage its monopoly to develop something for free they could never have afforded to develop otherwise, since that argument basically won in a court of law give or take some nuances. But, in the meantime, IE really <i>was</i> a better browser for a good long time.