From Redmond with Love - IE team sends cake for FF4

I wish more companies would do something like this. Honestly, IE9 and all the surrounding tech media is really leaving an awesome impression on me. Gestures like this prove that the IE team wants to take part in a modern internet world much more than any standard compliance chart ever could.<p>On a side note, I found Office 2010/2011, IE9 and Windows 7 a joy to use. And this is in stark contrast to Office 2003/2008, IE8 or Vista. Some things seem to be changing in Redmond!

I still think it's funny how they brand the cake with their own IE logo. It's like sending a picture of yourself as a birthday card.

Is that the IE3 icon on the cake?<p>Or maybe it's because the cake don't support full-resolution png icing.<p>Anyways, huge improvement over the first one, which was only black and white:<p><a href="http://fredericiana.com/2006/10/24/from-redmond-with-love/" rel="nofollow">http://fredericiana.com/2006/10/24/from-redmond-with-love/</a>

No wonder Firefox is planning to move to a shorter release cycle!

I think it's a hoax. If it was the real IE team parts of the cake wouldn't be on the pan. I'm also pretty sure the E would be hanging off the right side.

A clever MSFT plan. It motivates the Firefox team to increase the number of releases, so they eventually stop the actual development and realize that the infinite supply of free cakes is easily convertable to cash.

I get the feeling Firefox gets more cakes from Microsoft than they send in return, if its entirely based on release cycles.

I guess it keeps the IE developers in a job. IE was neglected before FF started taking market share away. Probably not many (or the right people) working on it before that.

Does the FF team reciprocate?

This is a bit of a naiive question, But what is the business rational behind Microsoft putting so much time and effort into IE? Where is the payback? Is it just so more people have Bing as their default search? Is it just so that Windows ships with a working modern browser as the user expects?<p>If anyone could clear it up for me, Much appreciated<p>=)

Maybe it's to say thanks for supporting the other half of Windows users Microsoft forgot, Windows XP users.

I guess sending cake to Google on Chrome release wouldn't be as funny. And it would be too often as well.

This is a really nice gesture from Microsoft. A humble example for everyone to learn from.

I wonder if Google gets a cake too...

But is the cake standards compliant?

Aw, isn't that sweet. You know what would be sweeter? A little note attached saying "P.S., we give up, we are switching to Webkit."

They keep sending cakes, Firefox will keep eating IE's market share cake!

The cake is a lie!

This is an excuse for people the world over to try and get in their supposed witty slams on IE. I've personally always felt sad for the IE team because I'm sure the engineers want to put out a badass browser that competes with the best the market has to offer, and I'm sure the management and marketing types are the ones that are demanding it's hobbled in certain ways to try and keep their corporate clients on the hook using their products.<p>At least, that's how I envision it.

Did they also hold a mock funeral for Firefox when IE9 shipped, a la iPhone/WP7? Or are they finally done with that kind of moronic behaviour?

Maybe I'm in a particularly bad mood, but this was a lot cuter the first time. I hate IE so much that maybe I've become sensitive to everything they do (at least I admit that might be the case).<p>It feel condescending to me, especially in light of the many public embarrassment that FF has caused IE (cheating benchmarks for example) and given that if anyone deserves to get something for actually shipping it's the IE team.<p>To me this is like the owner of a used car company sending a cake to the president of Toyota for being the #1 car manufacturer.

"Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year." - from the comments on the original article.<p>But seriously, it's a nice gesture from Microsoft, it goes to show that there are many different people working there and that we can't judge them as a whole.