That happened before some of the readers of this thread were born. A summary for those people, from the fog of distant memories: MS had an Internet Explorer that was not integrated in Windows, it was like any other browser. Then they decided to build it inside Windows. I remember that the Windows desktop got web views like widgets (web view as a name probably did not exist yet) and they called it Active Desktop. I think that it as COM/OLE objects too and the web view was probably one of them. File Explorer itself got an Internet Explorer like skin, probably with single click to navigate directories and open files, as if they were links. Then they claimed that it was impossible to disentangle IE from Windows. That eventually paved the way to the ruling against MS.

When I hear a giant company say that modifying some of its software is impossible I always think about that IE and laugh.

I agree with that view point.. yup

Billy Gates swore on a bible that Internet Explorer could not be removed and lied his ass off.

Profited very handsomely from his lies.