It's a huge peice of software, no question. But about 20% of the web apps I build at work are for internal consumption, and for that task IE (my company's standard browser) is one of my bestest buddies. I consider it essentially a gigantic API.

As a fer instance, I recently had to create a modest web-based text editing/formatting tool, and IE/win32 offers a really elegant way to deal with text-selection and formatting codes (using the TextRange object, for those keeping score). The object is either absent in all other browsers, or has only a fraction of the functionality IE gives it. And it won't work at all on any platform other than win32.

I've also become rather fond of IE filters, which are a efficient way to add some graphical finesse to a page without resorting to potentially weighty bitmaps. People surfing with something other than IE will still get the content, just not all the bells and whistles.

I've heard that IE's size comes, at least in some measure, from the defensive code they've had to include to parse all the poorly-written HTML, Javascript and CSS that's floating around the net.