Did you read the same article I did? The author emailed instacart... He even pasted the full email correspondence. The representative did not accept responsibility for the email not making it to him ("I apologize if for some reason you did not receive it.") which we now know _was_ instacart's fault, and did not offer any refunds.
It took the public shaming before Apoorva showed up on the thread and offered his money back.
Internet Explorer cannot be removed without damaging Windows or affecting other programs which depend on Internet Explorer's files. You also said yourself it is "pre-installed".
You are not required to be a Google+ user in order to use Gmail, and you obviously won't see integrations in Gmail unless you have a Google+ account.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_reader