Jobs pulled a Jobs, and everyone was sucked into the reality distortion field. That alone is worth the deal. Analysts have all been upgrading Apple. Consumers are far far less concerned about Apple now than they were a week ago. That WILL translate into millions or even billions of dollars in sales.
Communicator is worse.
Explorer is the lightest-weight browser out there. So from a technological point of view, I can't disagree with the decision. Apple has been trying to deal with Netscape for a while. Netscape has responded by treating Apple as a second class citizen. All of a sudden Apple makes nice with MS, and Netscape is burned for ignoring Apple.