Tonynet Explorer

The story behind "The Cake"

The Mozilla guys released Firefox 2 today. I know that it's a ton of work to release something as big and complex as a browser, so I thought it would be nice if we sent them a cake congratulating them on this achievement.

Since I didn't know any bakeries near the Mozilla headquarters, Christopher Vaughan and I called on a friend, Liz, down in Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus to see if she could help us out. She immediately obliged and found a bakery that would make the cake and deliver it. Liz mentioned something about the bakery not using food coloring, so our "e" logo wouldn't be blue. Oh well. Best not to poison the FF guys with food coloring anyway. (For those who care, it was a chocolate rum cake from the Prolific Oven in Palo Alto. This is apparently one of their most popular styles. I hope it was good.)

Well, Fred from the Mozilla project blogged about the cake, and the story got picked up on Digg in a hurry.

As usual the comments on Fred's blog and Digg are hilarious.

I wonder if there's a message hidden in binary in the black frosting around the edge...

Whose blind toddler decorated it for them?

It's probably poison. Ever hear of the trojan horse?
Microsoft: eliminating competition the old fashion way.

Please, like the IE team would seriously sign it "Love,"...good prank

You should send them a cake back, include the recipe, and say you'll gladly accept suggestions for improvement.

Just hope it doesnt have a naked bill gates inside

Did anyone actually eat that cake? And how many were down with diarrhoea or intestinal worms after that?

Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. We just wanted to give the FF team a pat on the back. There's no personal animosity between the teams (I like the FF team members I've met so far).

Nothing to see here.

[2006-10-24: fixed a link and some typos]