re : Only a handful of people understand the point

IE is NOT the most 'popular' browser. It is the most 'used' browser. This is a common and deliberately misleading marketing misnomer.

'popular' implies that people choose which browser they use, which in general is not the case.

The vast majority of people with Windows PCs have no idea you can download and install an alternative even if they understood it would make a difference, so they just use the one that came with windows on their computer.

Also large numbers of employees are stuck with locked down machines at their workplace and so have no choice but to use the bundled browser. Corporate windows admins like it that way because they can bork everything their users do with braindead 'policies'.