Do they really force their people to use IE at their offices?

^^^ Yup. They don't force per say, they just don't allow you to install 3rd party software on their system. Hence you are basically stuck with using only IE. In my previous job, the people valued security very high and went as far as disabling the USB ports and updates to their system. They felt Firefox and Chrome with all the 'extensions' could be vulnerable to attack.

Forget about corporate, even schools and colleges don't allow students to install anything on the PCs (at least the ones I know). Just think about how many PCs are there in schools and colleges... Now you get where that huge IE % comes from... It's basically people stuck with it and having no alternatives.

If a day comes when MS doesn't ship Windows with a browser or ships with say Chrome or Firefox alongside IE, then I am pretty sure that % will smash to single digits in a matter of months.

I second this, every office job I've ever had only offered IE as the web browser.

How is it unsafe? Chrome is the most secure browser there is. It's safer than internet explorer and far safer than firefox.

Chrome is probably the safest browser right now. lol

Google even offers money to anybody that can crack it and depending on the severity of the exploitation you could get thousands of dollars!