Mozilla CEO John Lilly Calls it Quits

Posted 05/12/2010 at 6:37am | by Paul Lilly

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John Lilly, the Chief Executive Officer of Mozilla, announced plans to step down from his position and head to Greylock Partners as a venture partner.

"This is a tough note for me to write -- I feel so incredibly lucky and humbled to have worked on such an amazing project, with such spectacular people, for the last few years," Lilly wrote in an email to employees. "But I've always been a startup guy at heart -- Mozilla was originally going to be a quick volunteer effort for me, but quickly turned into a full time job, and at the beginning of 2008 turned into the CEO job that I have now. I've really been missing working with startups."

Mozilla, of course, makes the Firefox browser, and under John Lilly's leadership, the open-source browser has continued to put a dent into Internet Explorer's market share and now claims about 25 percent of the browser population.

Though Lilly has only served as CEO since 2008, this is certainly an end of a era, of sorts, but not the end of the line for Firefox by any stretch. Firefox 4 is expected to be ready by October or November of this year, bringing with it a renewed focus towards all around speed.

In the meantime, Lilly said he is staying with Mozilla until a replacement is found, at which point he will continue to serve on the company's board of directors.

Image Credit: Flickr Poi