Gary Kovacs is taking the reigns of The Mozilla Corporation as the new chief executive, the company announced Thursday.
"He melds the fundamentals of a good executive with a powerful understanding that Mozilla's non-profit, public benefit mission drives everything we do, including those activities which might look like 'business as usual' to a casual observer," Mozilla Foundation chair Mitchell Baker wrote on her blog. "Gary brings a deep understanding of the mobile space and rich media from his time at Macromedia/Adobe and Sybase."
Kovacs brings a wealth of experience with him to Mozilla; he's the former senior vice president of markets, solutions, and products at Sybase, and he used to be the general manager and vice president of mobile and devices at Adobe. Kovacs also served as vice president of product marketing at Micromedia, and he spent a decade working for IBM.
According to outgoing CEO John Lilly, the search has been a six-month process. Lilly announced in May that he would be resigning to join venture firm Greylock Partners. Lilly remained at Mozilla during the search process, easing the transition before Kovacs takes over on Nov. 8.
Kovacs is the right person for the job, Lilly wrote, because "he's got deep background in the battlefields that will define the future of open Web: mobile and rich media, and he's been involved in building great organizations several times over."
Mozilla's products already reach 400 million people around the world. Baker said that they hope to increase that number to half a billion.
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