Linux comes with Firefox pre-installed (or some variant of it, depending on distro).
Windows comes with Edge pre-installed.
MacOS comes with Safari pre-installed.
OSX comes with Safari Mobile pre-installed.
Android devices appear to have a decent choice of browsers, and the default is chosen by the manufacturer. For a lot of them that's Chrome, but not all.
I don't think there's actually any large group of devices that has Chrome pre-installed.
Also, pure Android users are free to install any browser and set it as the default.
Chrome is so popular because it has been the best browser for years. Whether that's still true is open for debate. But I remember when it came out, finally an answer to the godawful shite that was IE. We may dislike it now, but it saved us from Microsoft's disaster. It's fascinating that you're now claiming that "even IE is having an uphill battle fighting that kind of power". How the tables have turned.
The problem is not so much with marketing power, but with coding investment. Writing a browser is a mammoth undertaking, with all the strange edge cases and standards. Even Microsoft has decided it doesn't see the point in writing one. We're going to be left with two browser choices not because of corporate power, but because it's just too much effort for not enough reward to write a third.
I see where TFA is coming from: if we could agree that browsers don't need to be this complex, then there would be more of them. But that would mean less flexible web pages, and we'd end up with something Flash-like being an attractive alternative.