I'm also interested in any suggestions for OLE WebBrowser alternatives, because IE is not exactly a top-of-the-line browser, but I wanted to make sure you know about the registry keys you can add that affect the behavior of the WebBrowser control within your specific application, so that at least you're getting the most out of it.

In particular the FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION "Feature Key" can upgrade the control's functionality to a more modern version of IE.

If you don't set this key, by default the WebBrowser emulates IE7(!) which can be problematic on a lot of sites.

We recently had to use this ley when a site we were loading started rejecting requests from browsers older than a certain vintage. Our control now presents itself to the server and renders pages like IE11.

There are also many other Feature Keys that can be used to tweak how the control behaves.

I think Microsoft has  monopoly on Web controls for Windows. From one hand it works pretty well even with complex content.  The drawback is a dependency on IE settings. For sites with very high security for IE settings that could be a problem