diff --git a/src/Angular.js b/src/Angular.js
index 678c6fe12484..f29a5c5ec504 100644
--- a/src/Angular.js
+++ b/src/Angular.js
@@ -1395,7 +1395,11 @@ function bootstrap(element, modules, config) {
 
     if (element.injector()) {
       var tag = (element[0] === document) ? 'document' : startingTag(element);
-      throw ngMinErr('btstrpd', "App Already Bootstrapped with this Element '{0}'", tag);
+      //Encode angle brackets to prevent input from being sanitized to empty string #8683
+      throw ngMinErr(
+          'btstrpd',
+          "App Already Bootstrapped with this Element '{0}'",
+          tag.replace(/</,'&lt;').replace(/>/,'&gt;'));
     }
 
     modules = modules || [];
diff --git a/test/AngularSpec.js b/test/AngularSpec.js
index 878eb9567d63..0b9ae8411658 100644
--- a/test/AngularSpec.js
+++ b/test/AngularSpec.js
@@ -786,7 +786,7 @@ describe('angular', function() {
       expect(function () {
         angular.bootstrap(element);
       }).toThrowMatching(
-        /\[ng:btstrpd\] App Already Bootstrapped with this Element '<div class="?ng\-scope"?( ng[0-9]+="?[0-9]+"?)?>'/i
+        /\[ng:btstrpd\] App Already Bootstrapped with this Element '&lt;div class="?ng\-scope"?( ng[0-9]+="?[0-9]+"?)?&gt;'/i
       );
 
       dealoc(element);