"Most of us hate microsoft" is honestly a pretty bold claim. They're just a company that makes software. The vast majority of the world's Linux users--which is to say, professionals who build or manage software that runs in Linux--don't care about them one way or another.
This sub might have an ideological skew, but you still don't know what people in here think about Microsoft.
Microsoft has been a pain for Linux professionals and maintainers for decades. M$ called Linux a cancer and actively developed strategies to harm us. Look up halloween documents. No reason to believe they are different now.
To be fair, when ie6 came out it was a really good browser. The concept of evergreen browsers wasn't broadly a thing back in 2001. Windows XP was a huge success and there was no way to convince the world to move off of it and many companies built their intranets specifically around ie6. I think it was Korea that built all their banking off of Active X.