Internet Explorer was officially retired in June, which was a happy occasion for nearly everyone in the tech industry. Following a long tradition of sending cakes to each other, the Firefox team at Mozilla sent a cake to Microsoft to celebrate the end of Internet Explorer.
Microsoft shared a photo earlier today of a cake it received from the Firefox team at Mozilla, complete with a large Internet Explorer logo. The cake reads, “you were the ie6ing on the cake” — spelling icing that way might be a little bit of a stretch, but we’ll let it slide this time.
Thanks for the beautiful 🎂, @firefox! We love the tradition of sending cakes to browser teams after reaching important milestones 😁 pic.twitter.com/AC5hBmNk4C
— Microsoft Edge Dev (@MSEdgeDev) July 11, 2022
Web browser development teams sending each other cakes is a tradition that goes back nearly a decade. Microsoft sent the Firefox team a cake for the release of Firefox 2.0 in 2006, which continued for most new major releases of Firefox — though they eventually became cupcakes as browser release cycles sped up. Mozilla sent its own cake to Microsoft after Internet Explorer 10 arrived in 2012, then Google’s Chrome team started sending cakes.
The celebratory sugar comes after Internet Explorer was finally retired in June, though the core engine is still sticking around as Internet Explorer Mode in the new Chromium-powered Edge browser. Microsoft will support IE Mode until 2029 at the earliest, so there might be an opportunity for one more IE-themed cake in the future.
