Registration free COM has existed since Windows XP, if I get my timeline right without bothering to look it up.

All modern Windows APIs introduced since Vista have been COM, classical Win32 C APIs are seldom introduced nowadays.

Certainly current Windows 11 performance problems have nothing to do with using COM all over the place, rather Webwidgets instead of native code, hiring people that apparently never did Windows programming, that apparently do AI driven coding.

Ah, macOS and iDevices driver model is equally based in COM like design, one would expect drivers to be something where performance matters.

Then there is XPC, Android IPC, and one could consider D-BUS as well, if it was more widely adopted across the GNU/Linux world.

You are absolutely right on all counts, although XPC/Binder/D-Bus aren't really something to compare against the core of COM (the ABI model), and I think many Windows developers would have some unkind things to say about DCOM.