I was taking a quick check to see if I was correct on the div/span claim. I am actually not finding anything to corroborate that.
I also want to add that I have little love for IE. Same for some of the other things that Microsoft have done. I just find it odd the juxtaposition of why some of that behavior is fine today, as long as it is someone else doing it.
Yep, Microsoft invented Ajax, so in a sense it was IE that made the Web 2.0 possible