In honor of today's Firefox 3 release, Microsoft's Internet Explorer team gave a cake to Mozilla. The tasty treat, which prominently displays IE's blue "e" icon, just arrived here at Mozilla headquarters in Mountain View.

The cake congratulates Mozilla on shipping Firefox 3 and expresses love from the IE team. Microsoft's IE developers also sent a cake to Mozilla in 2006 following the release of Firefox 2, so this is clearly becoming a tradition.

Portal jokes aside, the cake is a very friendly gesture of goodwill. As we have noted recently, the Internet Explorer team could learn a lot from Mozilla. Closer cooperation between Microsoft and Mozilla on standards and web innovation would be a big win for everyone. But until Microsoft gets its act straightened out, Mozilla will be eating Internet Explorer's marketshare in addition to cake.