Engineers from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer platform team participated in a “Ask Me Anything” chat on Thursday. 

Not surprisingly, one of the most popular questions was: “Do you believe the reputation of Internet Explorer is something you can change?”

“I hope so. Sincerely. A lot of things are changing. We announce the end of support for too old versions of IE or for out of date ActiveX control. This is a first step to reduce fragmentation which is really a pain for web developers,” David Catuhe, a member of the IE platform team, wrote in response.

The IE team also revealed the flavor of the cake and story behind the dessert that Mozilla sent them.

“It was a delicious marble vanilla/chocolate cake that /u/mbrubeck sent us from Baked Custom Cakes in Seattle,” team member Jacob Rossi recalled. “It was to congratulate us on shipping IE10. We started this tradition when we sent them a cake for Firefox 2. It was probably the best damn cake I’ve eaten.”

Perhaps the best question of the AMA chat came from someone who pointed out the obvious: “How do you feel about the fact that most people reading this AMA aren’t using your browser?”

“Challenged,” Anton Molleda responded.

The IE platform team also revealed that the re-branding of IE has been discussed internally.

“I remember a particularly long email thread where numerous people were passionately debating it,” Microsoft’s Jonathan Sampson explained. “Plenty of ideas get kicked around about how we can separate ourselves from negative perceptions that no longer reflect our product today.”

Should Microsoft re-brand IE? What is your current perception of IE? Sound off in the comments section.