IE Sends Cake to Firefox 2 Team 362

but they didn't have time, seeing how they were too busy building a better browser! Good night, everybody!

I think this is the poster child for the "itsatrap" tag.

...just got a whole lot friendlier

Reminds me of the prank [sfgate.com] they pulled on the Netscape team long time back. Not that this is another prank, but well...

Are they sure it wasn't just humble pie? :)

Better than the big IE logo they left back when IE4 shipped, although the cake surely didn't provide as cool of http://home.snafu.de/tilman/mozilla/mozilla-ie-car d.jpg [snafu.de]pictures. (It is sad seeing the guy placing the marketshare number there, however.)

That was pretty classy. (Even if ultimately it was intended as a bit of good-natured competitive ribbing, which it doesn't look like.)

I have to say, often times we're prone to think that large organizations such as Microsoft are just a big, faceless entity. As a whole, this may or may not be true, but either way, they're only made up of people. The IE team only wants to ship the best software possible given their resources, as does Mozilla.

The best to both teams -- let the competition continue!

Shouldn't it be http://fredericiana.com/2006/10/24/from-redmond-wi th-love/ [fredericiana.com] ?

When the cake was opened, the Firefox team found it was not quiet finished and full of bugs.

If it wasn't for the Firefox team, we'd all still be stuck with IE6 and the Internet Explorer team would have had to look for new jobs.

While the IE team touted the cake as 'new and innovative', after further investigation, the Firefox team discovered that Microsoft had used ingredients that originally appeared in Mozilla cakes several years earlier.

Then the FF team will slowly start disappearing from mysterious causes

Remember, Microsoft disbanded the IE team shortly after 6 was released. The IE team sends a cake not just for a "birthday," but as thanks for giving them jobs!

Who says Microsoft does not give back to the open source community?

Developers later found that they were unable to open the box containing the cake. When attempting to do so, they kept getting a message from WGA telling them that it was attempting to verify that theirs was in fact a Genuine Windows Cake, then their connection to the server would time out.

reads "Thank You for tabbed browsing."

For a change, Microsoft's IE team was showing a bit of class and acknowledging that without the competition and innovation from Mozilla Firefox, there (probably) wouldn't have been an IE 7 project. It also hints that there might be some subtle changes in Microsoft's old Cult of Bill approach. At the end of the day, software developers are just people, and political football aside, there really is no reason for animosity. Kudos to Microsoft's IE 7 team for being good sports.

"But did they include the recipe?"

Was the icing #FF6666, #6600FF or something else?

Was there a nice #FF0000 cherry on the top?

P.S.: No, it was not poisoned

Montgomery C. Gates: Look at them stuffing their faces, never knowing they're getting closer to the poisoned part of the cake... There IS poison in the cake, right?
Smithers Balmer: Uh, no sir, our lawyers said that's considered murder.
Montgomery C. Gates: Damn their oily hides!

Seems even the IE team knows that IE is dead.

As for the ex-lax, bugs, pubes in the cake of course none of that is true. Those things would only be possible if someone at Microsoft actually made the cake, and that's not how MS does things. They knew they couldn't make a good cake so they just went out and bought a cake from someone who already knew how to make one and then stuck their logo on it and called it theirs.

""The Microsoft Internet Explorer Team sent the Firefox team a cake for the release of Firefox 2!"

And being the nerds they are, it was baked into the shape of Counselor Troi [ytmnd.com]. The Firefox nerds, now trendy Galactica fans, merely laughed at the nerds who were so out of it as to still love "Star Trek".

The picture is hosted on flickr [flickr.com].

After all, Firefox has probably caused more updates and work on IE than anything else. Those IE developers are probably quite thankful seeing as their budget increased quite a bit, partially because there is now some decent competition on the field.

Congratulations on fixing Internet Explorer 3!

We know the how the Firefox team answered that question.

When Microsoft runs out of cake, the Opera team will have to politely ask for the chicken.

Just as they did with the Nintendo Wii and Xbox360, Microsoft is getting free publicity.

With Firefox just releasing their new version, it has eclipsed the launch of IE7. By sending a cake, which is sure to getting bloggers and slashdot to post, Microsoft directs the attention back on them. Also, it's good publicity. But we all know, no publicity is bad publicity.

SLASHDOTTERS YOU TOOK THE BAIT!

Lots of comments about how the IE team is happy to be empoyed, a friendly gesture, poking fun, etc etc. But I think this sort of thing is more common place than most of us imagine. Big companies that spend a lot of their time working on similar products follow eachother's progress very closely and are aware of the same difficulties they're both having. They may not be on the same team, but they're fighting the same battle. Even physical wartime battles have been known to halt to celebrate a common holiday, together.

I know that Terminix (a client of my company) congratulated Orkin (the evil competitor) on one of their recent anniversaries. It's a way of saying "We know what you're up against, and we know it kinda sucks. Hang in there."

My wife and I watched an episode of Dharma & Greg last night (TiVo, don't know the air date) where they're entering a dancing competition. Dharma's parents were against it claiming competition makes people mean and greedy. I see that a lot in society, and it doesn't have to be that way. Competition is to make us better individuals. Without competition we'd never progress to the next level. And because of that we should thank our competitors for putting up a good measure of excellence.

Even in sports like track and cross country where you can effectively compete against yourself, where's the push to keep getting a faster mile time, higher polevault, or longer long jump if you have nothing to compare it against? At the end of high school track meets I remember walking around and shaking the hands of everyone I competed with. If it weren't for them I wouldn't have been "in the top three" regularly. I'd have just been a dude running crappy lap times on the weekend.

Here's to competition! The evolver of our modern society. Thank your competitors, for they are what bring us a better life.

I would have sent a cake back to the IE team. Except I would have included the recipe on exactly how the cake was made along with it.

This might be the classiest thing I've ever heard of MS doing. No in-joke, no sarcasm, here's your non-pretentious cake, you deserved it.

It's how the rest of the world works. Healthy businesses acknowledge competition and inspiration. Their workers even go out for drinks with rivals now and again. $giantcorporateentity != $employee and all that.

I'm not exactly heralding the coming of a kinder, gentler MS that consistently behaves like a grownup, but baby steps like this are the beginnings of a change in corporate culture and should be encouraged.

Props to the IE 7 team, you guys showed some serious class and also delivered a great upgrade (minus a few bizarre interface choices) recently.

Now who do I have to send a cake to to get my menus back in IE without hitting alt?

I kid!

(mostly)