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Blog: Internet Mozilla Gets Its Microsoft Cake and Eats it Too
Shane McGlaun (Blog) - June 18, 2008 1:20 PM

39 comment(s) - last by murphyslabrat.. on Jul 4 at 2:28 AM

(Source: robceemoz)

Internet Explorer team sends Mozilla boys a cake

Yesterday marked the launch of Mozilla’s Firefox 3 and its attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the most downloads in a day. The downloads are still being counted until 11:16am PDT today, so you may still be able to help make a world record.

So far the Mozilla website shows that Firefox 3 has been downloaded 8,174,911 times worldwide with over 2.5 million of those downloads coming from the U.S. alone. The Internet Explorer team from Microsoft, feeling in a giving mood, sent the Firefox team a cake -- seriously.

The cake sported the Internet Explorer “E” symbol and read “Congratulations on Shipping! Love, The IE Team.” Arcanology notes that the cake has become a tradition and the Internet Explorer team sent over a similar cake when Firefox 2 shipped.

Arcanology also says that the “E” from the original cake was frozen and still sits in the refrigerator at Mozilla central to this day and it was pulled out and compared to the new cake.

I suspect the original “E” was saved as evidence in case any of the Firefox team met with an untimely demise or developed a severe case of pink eye. Those of you who have seen Knocked Up know what I am getting at.

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Interesting

By JasonMick

(blog) on 6/18/2008 3:18:14 PM , Rating: 5

I hear for Firefox 4, they aren't planning to use poison, but they are instead planning on having Steve Ballmer jump out of the cake.

The way the IE team figures it, if any of the Mozilla team members have heart conditions, that will be a quick way to cull their numbers.

Watch out Mozilla team!

RE: Interesting

By kattanna on 6/18/2008 3:38:22 PM , Rating: 3

quote:
planning on having Steve Ballmer jump out of the cake

while seeing that would make me lose my lunch, it would still be damn funny.

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RE: Interesting

By xphile on 7/3/2008 9:59:38 PM , Rating: 2

Except that what would actually happen is this:

Balmer jumps out of the cake; proceeds to frantically eat the entire cake himself; pulls out an invoice charging the Mozilla team for the cake; slams it on the table, then runs off down the corridor screaming hysterically at 125 DB ...

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RE: Interesting

By amanojaku on 6/18/2008 4:09:23 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
I hear for Firefox 4, they aren't planning to use poison, but they are instead planning on having Steve Ballmer jump out of the cake.

I thought the CAKE looked nasty, but Ballmer? I think I just threw up in my mouth.

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RE: Interesting

By chmilz on 6/18/2008 10:14:15 PM , Rating: 4

Beware a warm, creamy filling, Mozilla. Anyone who remembers Van Wilder knows what I mean. Not all pastries are as innocent as they seem.

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RE: Interesting

By rupaniii on 6/23/2008 8:28:03 PM , Rating: 1

Web Browsers, Web Browsers, Web Browsers, Web Browsers, Web Browsers, Web Browsers ...

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RE: Interesting

By just4U on 6/24/2008 5:11:27 AM , Rating: 3

I think it's nice of the IE team to do that.

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latest numbers

By Screwballl on 6/18/2008 10:13:51 PM , Rating: 2

last check, they haven't moved much since lunch time... numbers are rounded, not exact since they are changing slightly.

Total Downloads 9,739,109

US: 3.05 million
Germany: 808,000
Japan: 452,000
Canada: 274,000
Brazil: 223,000
China: 188,000
Russia: 117,000
Australia: 150,000
Iran: 262,000
Most of Europe is 30-300,000 except Germany as shown above.

I would hope they show a rundown of download per country and if possible language.

RE: latest numbers

By smitty3268 on 6/19/2008 12:33:11 AM , Rating: 2

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord

has an interactive map that shows how many downloads per country.

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RE: latest numbers

By cory107 on 6/21/2008 2:12:10 AM , Rating: 2

Ummmm not that I'm too religious but when i scrolled over Iraq's dl's it read: 666. I laughed a little bit inside

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RE: latest numbers

By DeepBlue1975 on 6/24/2008 12:05:29 PM , Rating: 2

Not working here, every country reads 0.

PS: I'm using firefox 3 :(

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RE: latest numbers

By zebrax2 on 6/19/2008 6:34:31 AM , Rating: 2

install noscript then don't allow spreadfirefox.com. instead of the interactive map you'll have a list of countries and number of pledges on them

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RE: latest numbers

By Screwballl on 6/19/2008 12:56:49 PM , Rating: 2

yeah but that entails work and the map is a bit better /laugh/

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RE: latest numbers

By hadifa on 6/22/2008 9:15:43 PM , Rating: 2

Had a quick look and I noticed Firefox is very popular in Australia and Iran relative to their population.

Iran > 496,000 pop > 70,000,000

Australia > 265,000 pop > 20,000,000

compared to most countries, these are very high.

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In other news

By FITCamaro on 6/19/2008 3:04:05 PM , Rating: 3

The entire Mozilla team failed to come into work today reporting massive cases of diarrhea.

RE: In other news

By Skyguy on 6/19/2008 6:58:29 PM , Rating: 3

The cake is a lie.

;)

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win98=Opera

By perzy on 6/24/2008 3:58:27 PM , Rating: 2

Why Opera? I tell you why: I sit on an old laptop , mem upgrade real expensive and hard...= 128 mb=win98=opera. Mozilla does NOT run under win98.
But i found that opera is really good, and i really like that it starts exacly, even on the page, where you left of!

RE: win98=Opera

By murphyslabrat on 7/4/2008 2:28:59 AM , Rating: 2

Mozilla 2 does run on Win98...Just putting it out there.

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firefox3 + GREECE

By kailor on 6/28/2008 5:33:07 AM , Rating: 2

i also use firefox 3....

i am from Greece and i am proud that Greece hit 115,887 downloads.

No Opera 9.5 cake?

By shadowofthesun on 6/18/08, Rating: -1

RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By smitty3268 on 6/18/2008 4:53:40 PM , Rating: 5

Let's be fair, they can't send out a cake to every single browser team out there - they'd be sending out a new one every single day if they counted all those browsers that no one has ever heard of. The reason FF gets one and Opera doesn't, is that one has less than 1% market share and the other has over 20%.

Don't crucify me, I think Opera is a fine browser, but they have to draw a line somewhere.

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By Reclaimer77 on 6/18/2008 5:06:16 PM , Rating: 1

Why use Opera ? Just... why ?

Yeah yeah I know, your " classy and different " than the rest of us...

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By overzealot on 6/19/2008 4:21:36 AM , Rating: 2

Why drive a mazda over a nissan?
Winamp over iTunes?
Maybe it just suits me better?

You should probably be more concerned with finding out what works for you, than hating those who use something else.

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By exploderator on 6/19/2008 7:02:39 AM , Rating: 2

Opera ,straight of the box, is 95% or better of what I want in a browser. Last I tried Firefox it needed a bunch of extensions, they kept changing and needed updating. Just to get tabs, sheesh. Yeah, I will have to re-try FF soon, but Opera has always been very good to me. Many years now, many friends, many newbies/noncomp's (non-computerites), and Opera has been an instant fix for many a PC's IE woes, like viruses, popups, no-tabs... Including years before Firefox existed.

Full respect for FF, but Opera is great too, and probably deserves credit for many of the ideas behind improved browsers, FF included. The Opera crew deserves full credits for working hard, doing a great job, for the right reasons, and mostly giving it away. They are making a great contribution. It's not their fault if most of the world are lame on computers.

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By omnicronx on 6/19/2008 8:47:48 AM , Rating: 3

I always found Opera bloated, the reason I use firefox is because it does exactly what it is meant to do, browse websites in a timely fashion, with a browser that is compatible with 99% of the sites out there. Opera certainly does not fit the bill for either really...

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By stryfe on 6/19/08, Rating: 0

RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By omnicronx on 6/19/2008 11:48:52 AM , Rating: 2

I would tend to disagree, maybe with firefox 1.0, but ever since 2.0 and especially with Firefox 3.0 speedy render times, I no longer think this is true. It seems with firefox, that pages are being cached a certain amount of links in, before I even go to the site, this all adds to its speedyness.

Sure the page seems to pop up faster on opera, but the full rendering (images etc) is definatly faster on my computer in firefox. Its almost seemless, whereas opera seems a bit jumpy.

I do love the Opera plugins though, better than any browser out there.

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By murphyslabrat on 6/20/2008 6:03:04 PM , Rating: 2

I, in turn, would disagree with you.

While I do prefer FF, I have only been using modern computers for about a year now. Before that, I was playing online games like Cardmaster Conflict, at CMC.MRX.CA

In that game, looking at your deck, there would be hundreds of images on a single page. With the computer I was using, a celeron 566, 128MB RAM, using FF was incredibly unwieldy. FireFox 3 may change that, but at the time Opera was, hands down, the better browser to use.

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By Chaser on 6/23/2008 10:48:30 AM , Rating: 3

I don't think evaluating the latest web browsers on a computer that is well over 5 years old is an accurate means of assessing web browser performance.

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By Lightnix on 6/26/2008 7:49:53 PM , Rating: 2

It's closer to 9 years really, I'm sure there were 533MHz Mendocino Celerons in 1999.

That said I'm quite pleased with the performance of Firefox 3 over 2, it seems a lot more responsive than Firefox 2, particularly when changing tabs.

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By murphyslabrat on 7/4/2008 2:27:10 AM , Rating: 2

Not necessarily. We are talking about performance in severely performance-limited environment. it rings close to the atom-equiped sub-notebooks, and even the wildly popular EEE PC. Firefox 3 undoubtedly takes the crown now, but my point was that, like Via vs Intel, Opera had an advantage over Firefox, while not sacrificing compliance ala IE.

Obviously, Opera has some work to do in rivaling FF3; I am just saying that it wasn't a redundant product, and it did have its place....even if it was on hardware that should have retired 5 years ago (Lightnix is correct. Specifically, it is an HP 6645c).

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By Saosin on 6/19/2008 2:02:27 PM , Rating: 1

Because I like it?

I've tried IE7, FF3 and Safari 3 extensively but none has made my day as easy and efficient as Opera 9.5.

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By Kougar on 6/20/2008 12:41:50 PM , Rating: 2

Because it actually works, and FF doesn't after you add in a few plugins to try and gain some of the same functionality you get in Opera out of the box? Or maybe because the memory footprint and program/window response times are better...

Nothing against FF, but I got tired of plugins making FF crash. You have to spend time time finding stable FF plugins that work, and once you do then every tiny browser update breaks a few plugins and the cycle repeats endlessly. Or a major update breaks them all. Even then stability doesn't approach that of Opera's.

It's not about being classy, some of us just prefer to use software that actually works. ;)

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By Chaser on 6/19/2008 2:05:55 PM , Rating: 3

Here we go again with another "What about Opera? What about Opera? No fair!" post on the coat tails of Firefox.

Accord to this source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_br...

IE 73%
FF 18%
Opera .7%

I guess us 81% simply lack the sophistication to "walk into the light". But it could also explain why Opera fans have to post over other browser announcements to get anyone to notice.

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RE: No Opera 9.5 cake?

By overzealot on 6/20/2008 3:53:32 AM , Rating: 2

Or they're all using the "firefox" browser mask?
Or the IE one (which was enabled by default before version 9)
Please, examine your source before hotlinking.

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