It's a "security" thing. Big companies pay Microsoft money in order to have a "secure IT infrastructure" that "regulators" will like. Microsoft's lawyers wrote some words that appeal to those folks. Google's stuff is free, and so Chrome doesn't come with any guarantee that it won't single-handedly take out the company's entire technology infrastructure.
Obviously this is very far removed from reality (you can read Chromium's source code and audit yourself. IE? Nope.), but these people aren't operating in the real world. IE is the best browser for the imaginary world that the "decision makers" live in.
(On my work machine, running chrome.exe causes an alert to be triggered and execution is denied. Of course, renaming it to not_chrome.exe allows it to work fine. Secure!)
Hmm, an externally-audited "certified" version of chrome may be an interesting product to sell. Web browsers are a primary source of risk exposure (next to e-mail) for corporations. Slap on a few logos, auditors, and clip art of happy people in suits, and you have yourself some corporate confidence.
I do think the "no one ever got fired for picking Microsoft" is part of it, but it's also a very well developed eco-system for a mid-sized shop that don't have the man power or expertise. With MS you have tools like group policy and tons of vendors do tie ins with Active Directory to make offering single sign in services (VPN, email, extranet, etc) very easy.
People are down on MS because they feel that it's just the "easy" decision, but they also have a mature and well developed product that works pretty well for a midsized business with a small IT staff.
Obviously this is very far removed from reality (you can read Chromium's source code and audit yourself. IE? Nope.), but these people aren't operating in the real world. IE is the best browser for the imaginary world that the "decision makers" live in.
(On my work machine, running chrome.exe causes an alert to be triggered and execution is denied. Of course, renaming it to not_chrome.exe allows it to work fine. Secure!)