..based on another.

ActiveX is code delivery technology based on OLE2. Remember? Object Linking and Embedding. IE is not delivered across the net. That makes IE an OLE control, not an ActiveX control. Most of the stuff you have on your computer is OLE controls, installed by various setup routines. Some things (Sun's Java VM is an example) arrive as a result of browser parsing <OBJECT> tags. Those are true ActiveX controls.

Microsoft managed to successfuly leverage OLE's success into an apearance of ActiveX success. But I think it's just an appearance.