I think what will happen is that IE will be included, but not installed by default or it will be installed but you will have the option to uninstall it or at least hide it, a bit like what happened to Windows Media Player vs Real Player a few years back. M$ can put whatever they like in W7 as do PC manufacturers who add all kinds of rubbish like Norton AV and Google stuff.
My new laptop came with Norton, that was the first to go, followed by Google Desktop search and 4 other Google apps.