Breaking: Mozilla has a new CEO

Mozilla has a new CEO. The announcement on Mozilla's official web blog confirms that Mitchell Baker is no longer Mozilla's CEO. Mozilla's new CEO is Laura Chambers, who has been a Mozilla board member for the past three years.

Chambers will fill the role as interims CEO until the end of the year or until a permanent replacement is found. Baker continues to work for Mozilla as Mozilla Corporation Executive Chairwoman.

Baker says that Chambers is "well-equipped to guide Mozilla through this transitional period". The focus in the 10 months to come will be on "delivering successful products" and "building platforms that accelerate momentum" according to the announcement.

Chambers will refine "the company's vision" and align "the corporate and product strategy behind it" according to the post. She will also double down on core products like Firefox.

Whether that is even possible in the few months that she has as CEO remains to be seen.

Baker was criticized in the past for her salary as CEO at Mozilla. While her salary doubled several times in the past years, Mozilla Firefox's marketshare dropped.

Mozilla also let go of hundreds of employees in 2020 as part of a restructuring of the company.

Firefox, Mozilla's core product and main money maker, is mentioned once in the announcement. It is listed as one of several of Mozilla's core products.

Mozilla makes most of its revenue from search deals in Firefox. In particular, from promoting Google Search in Firefox.

The organization created several products in the past to diversify its revenue sources. Most of them are web-based services, like the recently announced Mozilla Monitor Pro, Mozilla VPN or Firefox Relay.

These, as well as project such as Mozilla AI, have helped Mozilla diversify revenue. Royalties still make up more than 80% of the organizations overall revenue.  Mozilla's non-Firefox products are growing, but the organization needs more of them to be prepared for a time when revenue from search engine deals may fall significantly.

Closing Words

Others, closer to the matter, will evaluate Baker's years as a CEO at Mozilla. Facts are that Firefox lost market share in that time and that Mozilla pivoted to other products to prepare for the future. Currently, Mozilla seems to pivot away from naming all of its new products "Firefox". The organization renamed some of them, for instance Firefox Monitor, to Mozilla Monitor.

Firefox is not neglected, but it may still feel as if Mozilla could have done better earlier. The unlocking of full extensions support for Firefox for Android happened just a month ago. It could have been introduced earlier. Now, even Microsoft is bringing extensions support to its Edge browser for Android.

Now You: if you'd be Mozilla's CEO, what would you do next?

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