the "throw money at giving away IE for free" strategy from Microsoft is a big reason antitrust regulators went after them in the late 90s.
lost the "browser wars" hard once Microsoft started bundling Internet Explorer for free with windows in the late 90s. the silver lining: they open-sourced the code, which eventually became Firefox.
AOL bought Netscape in 1999 mostly for the brand, the actual product was already fading by then.