I wasn’t that tech savvy when I got my first desktop in 1994. Until then, I had only had a Commodore 64. I started with AOL because it seemed like the only way to get on the internet. Once I figured out that it was a horrible and expensive product I switched to a flat rate provider, rather than “by the minute” (which was a scam when it took 2 minutes just to download 1 webpage). The instillation disk came bundled with Netscape Navigator for free. I used Netscape from 1995 until it morphed into Firefox, and then continued using Firefox until a few years ago when better FOSS browsers came out.
It was never that hard to switch derault browsers in Win 98, and Netscape was not only free, but very heavily promoted everywhere.
My son uses Windows. He has machines running Windows 1 all the way up to Windows 11. He loves retro computers. He also has a couple Linux machines, but he prefers Windows even though he constantly talks to me about how horrible Windows is and how many things don’t work properly and the surveillance that is embedded in the OS. I know that Microsoft is trying to be as evil as Google. That’s why (as I stated on a different comment reply) I think the government went after the default browser issue because it was the softest target. Also, when they won they just forced Microsoft to make it easier to change the default browser, which gave them a victory in the media, but did nothing to curtail Microsoft’s tactics.