That s so that consumers and corporations can easily migrate to Windows98. Once you re ready, you can enable the web-style folder browsing which causes the folder browser to behave more like a web browser. It works the same for all information, local or remote. These features use the common web browsing technologies, which are now part of Windows. IE is just a small 64K-byte program that utilizes that common code.
Any application can independently invoke services to access an URL or render an HTML file.
I am not sure that many people at DOJ realize what MS has really done or the degree to which users will benefit as time goes by. The information appliance Farber has proposed that OEMs and consumers be able to mix and match components as they choose. There are merits to both sides of this debate. Windows does allow a large degree of customization, just as Farber desires. But that does not take away from the technical merit of what MS has done.