Mitchell Baker becomes Mozilla CEO, Can she invigorate Firefox, now in third place?

April 8, Mozilla board announced that Mitchell Baker, the chairman of Mozilla Foundation, is appointed as the next CEO of Mozilla Corporation.  As the share of “Firefox” has halved in three years, she is coming back as a CEO, facing big challenges.

When Chris Beard decided to step down from CEO in August 2019, Mozilla has been seeking a new CEO.  Meanwhile, Baker has played an active role in dealing with daily operations, and in December of the same year, she became interim CEO.  She shifted the organization’s focus to long-term impact.

Baker was involved in founding the nonprofit organization Mozilla Foundation, and she has continued to lead the organization, and even now so, as the chairman.  When Mozilla Foundation founded Mozilla Corporation in 2005, she became the CEO and kept the position till 2008. 

Mozilla has searched for external candidates for eight months, but concluded that Baker is “the right leader for Mozilla at this time.”

According to the board, “Mozilla’s strategic plan is focused on accelerating the growth levers for the core Firefox browser product and platform while investing in innovative solutions to mitigate the biggest challenges facing  the internet.”   In Net Applications browser share, Mozilla gave up second place to “Microsoft Edge” this March.  Now in third place, its share is 7.19%, which is a mere half of what it was three years ago.

In a blog post, Baker said, “The increasing vertical integration of internet experience remains a big challenge.” “Increasingly, numbers of people recognize that the internet needs attention,” and “Mozilla has special, if not unique role to play here.”  She also said that now is the time for them to make use of their understanding of the web platform and technical depth.

Mozilla
https://www.mozilla.org/