Here’s what the outgoing CEO had to say at D: Dive Into Mobile, in an interview with Walt Mossberg and me.

You’ll want to watch just to see his response to Walt’s blunt, “Firefox OS: What the f**k?” question.

Kovacs also confirmed the first Firefox OS phones will start arriving in five countries in June, with 11 more slated before the end of the year (though not the U.S., which is slated to get its first taste of Firefox OS in 2014).

In the meantime, if you want to see the latest Firefox OS build in action, check out this post from Lauren Goode.

We’ll be posting the rest of the full video interviews from D: Dive Into Mobile in the coming days, so check back to see what you missed or relive the highlights of what you saw in New York.

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

It’s been a long, hectic week for news — so it’s understandable if you’ve missed a couple stories on the technology side of things. Here’s a quick weekend roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. In an essay in AllThingsD Voices, Jan Chipchase writes that Google Glass is the company’s “unintentional public service announcement on the future of privacy … it threatens surreptitious, unexpected or continuous recording from the perspective of the human-eye/ear view.”
2. At D: Dive Into Mobile, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum announced that his messaging app is now bigger than Twitter, which officially claims 200 million monthly active users.
3. Also announced at our mobile conference were Facebook’s updates to its iPhone and iPad apps to incorporate the “Chat Heads” from Facebook Home. As of Wednesday, those changes have started rolling out to users.
4. In an interview with Arik Hesseldahl, Workday co-CEO and Greylock Partner Aneel Bhusri said, “it’s the most disruptive time in 25 years” for enterprise, and that landing HP as a customer at Workday “gives people more comfort that the cloud is real.”
5. Peter Zatko, a computer hacking expert better known as Mudge, is leaving his post at DARPA, where he was tasked with helping government agencies fend off cyber attacks. Mudge’s next stop? Google.
6. If the netbook wasn’t dead already, it will be soon. New data from research house IHS iSuppli say shipments of the mini-computers will fall to zero by 2015.
7. Maybe you’ve heard of this small company called Microsoft? Windows Phone head Terry Myerson is casting his division as an underdog and going on the offensive against Google: “[there is] clearly mutiny in the Starship Android,” he said.
8. Facebook would love to put its new Home overlay on Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Apple almost certainly doesn’t want it there. In this interview, Kara Swisher asked Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer and mobile head Cory Ondrejka to explain the two companies’ complicated relationship.
9. If you haven’t heard of Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi yet, you will soon. With 7.19 million handsets sold in 2012, Xiaomi president Bin Lin said the company expects to sell twice as many this year.
10. And finally, one of readers’ favorite quotes of the week came from AllThingsD’s own Walt Mossberg. He kicked off Dive Into Mobile by asking Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs about Firefox’s mobile operating system: “So … what the f**k?”

To stay on top of the latest, you should follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

1. “Firefox OS? What the f**k?” asked AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg, kicking off the day’s first interview. Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs said it’s all about the open Web standards that underlie the forthcoming Firefox operating system.
2. Google may not have 44 million robotic cars on the road, but Waze has 44 million users, Waze CEO Noam Bardin said, and they make Waze’s maps better by using them. Bardin touted the power of crowdsourced driving directions, which so far have “validated” about 1.5 billion km (or about 932 million miles).
3. Google’s Jason Spero, appearing with Millennial Media’s Mollie Spillman, said that mobile ads will have more potential once they can track user behavior for advertisers’ sake. However, Spillman added, “It’s becoming more mainstream and mandatory that mobile is part of the marketing budget or media spend.”
4. Xiaomi sold 7.19 million handsets in 2012, and expects to sell double that number this year. The high-end smartphone company is one of China’s fastest-growing. “We believe the future of the mobile Internet is really about services,” said company president Bin Lin.
5. Lady Gaga’s manager Troy Carter simultaneously balanced Gaga’s plans for a hybrid album-app with the fact that physical CD sales are still incredibly important in the music business: “You can’t shock the water in our business. It’s about gradual change,” he said. “You still have to cater to the market that’s out there.”

For more, please check out our full list of stories from D: Dive Into Mobile. See you tomorrow!

Mozilla, the foundation behind the popular Firefox Web browser, wants to take the lead amid the multiple companies vying for third place. The company is working on the Firefox OS, a mobile system software initiative similar to what Google is doing with the Chrome OS for the desktop. In a nutshell, it’s taking the set of standards coding for a browser environment and bringing it to an entire operating system for the phone.

Here’s the thing: If the duopoly of the massively popular Android and iOS is working for consumers — and sales prove that it obviously is — why do we need a new operating system entirely?

Or, as Walt Mossberg put it so aptly: “Firefox OS. What the f**k?”

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs’s answer, in two words: The ecosystem.

Kovacs made the case for Firefox OS at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference today, claiming that while consumers may enjoy the many apps they have now, that experience will grow exponentially if Firefox OS is adopted.

“Our whole mission is to stimulate the ecosystem,” Kovacs said, citing the first wave of innovation that Mozilla’s Firefox browser created years ago when first released. “The number of people, websites and experiences exploded.”

The main pitch here is to developers: Unlike Android or iOS, Firefox OS apps are based on open Web standards, which many developers came of age using over the rise of the first dot-com boom.

And that could appeal to coders in the developing world, where the Firefox OS is really targeted. Worldwide low-cost (under $150) smartphone shipments are forecast to grow to 311 million in 2016, after having doubled every year since 2010, according to research data from NPD group. Markets like South America, Africa and Asia are ripe for the targeting in going after the low end.

Of course, Kovacs and company will face stiff competition, as both Google and Facebook are going after international emerging markets with Android and Facebook Home, respectively.

Kovacs admits that we may not see the ecosystem explode right off the bat. The company expects the first wave of devices to kick things off, while hoping for wider appeal later on, after developers (hopefully) take up arms and start creating apps for the OS.

“This is a V1 product,” Kovacs said. “Short-term, it will be a brand appeal. But the innovation will explode later.”

But when exactly does the company plan to launch it? And where? During his appearance at the opening of our D: Dive Into Mobile conference on Monday, Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs said the company is planning a first-wave rollout of the OS that will begin in just a few months.

“We plan to launch in five countries in June and 11 more by the end of the year,” Kovacs said. “We plan to hit Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. … We’ll hit the U.S. in 2014.”

Why target those markets and not bigger ones like the United States?

“In Silicon Valley we tend to see the world through high-end devices,” Kovacs said. “But that’s not true in the rest of the world. So in the short term, we’re launching in emerging markets where Firefox is particularly strong. … It didn’t make sense for us to launch a version-one device around the world.”

Gary Kovacs, who has been CEO of Mozilla for just over two years, will be stepping down later this year, the company announced this morning to employees. The Mountain View, Calif.-based open source software nonprofit foundation (which is also a for-profit company) said it will be searching for a new leader immediately to replace Kovacs, who will remain on the board of Mozilla.

“After three years of a lot of change to move the organization faster forward, I wanted to move back to something more commercial,” said Kovacs in an interview yesterday, in which he outlined the many changes made at Mozilla since he arrived, including adding staff, opening global offices and, most of all, doubling down in mobile. “It is really a different Mozilla.”

Kovacs came to Mozilla in late 2010 — after stints as an exec at Sybase and Adobe, as well as at Zi Corporation, a company specializing in embedded software and services for mobile and consumer devices — to lead the development and direction of its best-known product, the Firefox Web browser.

But Kovacs, who had a strong mobile background, was also brought in to spur Mozilla’s move to a key arena with the development of its Firefox OS, a mobile operating system. That’s because while Firefox has kept its browser market share against larger rivals such as Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and garners a large chunk of revenue from royalties from making Google’s search engine the default in its browser, Mozilla has also had to move past its reliance on desktop software.

Thus, a number of moves, the most significant of which has been Firefox OS. A Web-based platform where all the features and apps are created using the HTML5 Web standard, the project was originally called “Boot to Gecko,” and has largely been aimed at the international market.

As noted by Liz Gannes last summer in a post about Firefox OS:

It has won the support of a crew of global carriers, with the first Firefox OS phones set to launch early next year in Brazil, through Telefónica’s Vivo.

Firefox OS is to be an open mobile platform where every app and function is based on HTML5, with none of the so-called “native apps” specific to a particular operating system.

Want to make a call? HTML5. Want to send a message? HTML5. Want to play a game? HTML5.

The push toward HTML5 as a broader mobile platform comes at a time when some early advocates seem to be moving away from mobile Web applications out of frustration with their performance. For instance, the new version of the Facebook iPhone app has reportedly been rebuilt specifically for iOS to make it much faster. Previous versions had been built around HTML5 in the interest of compatibility across fragmented mobile platforms.

But Mozilla is doubling down on the Web. The named reference to Mozilla’s biggest brand is purposeful. Much as the Firefox browser targeted Internet Explorer, so Firefox OS is a major project meant to disrupt the existing smartphone leaders.

In this case, that’s iOS, Android and Windows Phone — where the operating systems and apps are not as open and compatible as Mozilla and its partners would like.

Firefox OS isn’t going to try to compete with the high end of the market, but rather with entry-level phones at relatively low prices, Mozilla has said. The thrust is to engage first-time smartphone users in emerging markets around the world.

The carrier partners on record supporting the project are now Deutsche Telekom, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor and Etisalat.

Kovacs has also been striking a lot of commercial partnerships, such as a recent software project with Samsung to build a new browser engine for Android and the ARM architecture called Servo, which will be written in Mozilla’s new Rust programming language.

As part of the CEO change, longtime Mozilla leaders Mitchell Baker and Brendan Eich will continue to step up their involvement in the company, with Baker’s title as executive chairman and Eich’s as CTO and SVP of engineering. In other management changes: Jay Sullivan, SVP of products, has been appointed COO; Harvey Anderson, VP of business affairs and general counsel, has been named SVP of business and legal affairs; and Li Gong, who has been running Mozilla’s Asian operations, will also take on the role of SVP of mobile devices.

“We have been intent on making change into mobile and into reinvigorating our relationships with commercial players,” said Baker. “Gary’s been really helpful in developing deep mobile outlook and capabilities, which is critical going forward.”

Who’s going to take up the fight is unclear — which perhaps makes the search for a CEO a little more difficult, especially given Mozilla’s unusual status as both a for-profit and a nonprofit. That can be a hindrance, since it is not headed for an IPO to shower its Silicon Valley employees with lucrative stock.

Kovacs had replaced John Lilly, who left to become a venture partner at Greylock Partners. Lilly also led Mozilla for about two years, and has remained on its board.

He noted that the change of leadership is normal at Mozilla, and also that the job for the next leader is deeply challenging.

“Firefox changed the world, and now we have to orient around how to build mobile,” he said. “And while the odds are still ‘who knows,’ Mozilla is now in a good position to fight the fight.”

As it turns out, Kovacs will talk more about the Firefox OS project — and these changes at Mozilla — when he takes the stage at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference, which takes place next week in New York.

Until then, here’s his memo to staff, which was sent out this morning:

Hello, all,

What a ride!

When I first joined Mozilla in 2010, it was clear that the Web was at a turning point. Competition on desktop was more intense than ever, smartphone adoption was on fire, and new challenges to openness were developing in both areas of these converging worlds. We needed to move faster, pivot hard to mobile, and scale globally. And we needed to change how we operated if we were to lead the Web through these market transitions. It was this challenge that lured me to Mozilla back in 2010, and it was this challenged that kept me engaged ever since. I just knew that if we focused our energies and executed with the passion and urgency that defined us, we would do amazing things together.

And we have! This period has been an incredible time of growth for Mozilla, and for me personally. I couldn’t be more proud of the work we have done — on desktop, on mobile, and in advancing our mission to empower the next 2 Billion Web citizens coming on line for the first time. The project today is led by experienced teams, set on a strong foundation financially and operationally, and with a clear path to the future.

It is my confidence in this team that makes this the right time for me to move on to the next phase of my personal journey. Today, I am announcing that I will be stepping down as CEO of Mozilla later this year. I am committed to continue through the search for a new CEO and to ensure that we do not miss a beat in the process. Following this, I will stay on as an active member of Mozilla’s board of directors — so I am staying within the family to help as much as I can.

So, what next? In 2010, when I told my father I was joining Mozilla, he said “Son, you don’t know anything about cheese.” (he has a strong accent). Last year, after he learned more about us, and our mission, (including how to correctly pronounce our name), he simply said: “Wow, the work you are doing is critical to the world. “lease keep going!” And today, I simply pass along that message: Please keep going! We have momentum, we have a great vision and mission, and we have tremendous support from all of our partners and users for what we are doing. We cannot let up — not for one second! Stay focused, keep going, and keep rocking the free Web!

The world is expecting nothing less!

– gary

And, if you want even more, here’s a video interview I did with Kovacs in early 2011 when he first got to Mozilla:

First off, carriers love anything that threatens to lessen the power of Apple and Android. It’s why they always express hope and optimism for any new release of Windows or BlackBerry and have for years.

“Duopolies are not beneficial for any industry,” Telefonica CEO Cesar Alierta said onstage at Mozilla’s press conference on Sunday. Telefonica is betting very big on Firefox OS, bringing it to several countries this year and to all its markets by the end of next year.

Even with BlackBerry and Windows Phone, Telecom Italia CEO Franco Bernabè says there is enough opportunity for Firefox and even Tizen, a mobile version of Linux.

“I think there is room for all of them,” Bernabè said in a brief interview at the Mozilla event. “The only thing we don’t want is to have two monopolies dominating the market.”

But Firefox offers two additional benefits beyond just offering carriers a chance to knock Google and Apple down a peg.

The first of these is cost. The operating system, like Android, is free. But even more than that, it is designed to run well on low-end hardware where Android performs poorly or can’t run at all.

Secondly, Firefox is open. Carriers can do whatever they want, from running their own apps and services to branding and anything else.

That could give Firefox and Tizen a leg up on BlackBerry and Microsoft, Bernabè said. “In our opinion, who will prevail will be the open source platforms.”

There is still a huge challenge, though. Firefox OS actually has to run well. And that’s where the carrier’s dreams could end.

The list of companies that bet too early and too heavily on HTML is a long one that includes, most notably, Facebook, which has since reversed course and focused heavily on native work for iOS and Android.

Analysts say Firefox has lined up an impressive array of partners but still has a lot of work to do in order to deliver a product that will sell.

“The real acid test for Firefox OS and its long-term prospects is the quality of the software itself and the user and developer experiences that it fosters,” said Ovum analyst Tony Cripps. “What is clear from the Firefox OS demonstration handsets that we have seen was that they are still some way from being market ready, being both slow and buggy.”

Even low-cost smartphones have to work well, Cripps said, noting that there is increasing competition from Android as well as the latest generation of feature phones such as Nokia’s Asha touch line and Samsung’s Rex phones.

Meanwhile, the U.S. could prove an even tougher nut to crack. The home market is on Mozilla’s radar, but not the top priority, says CEO Gary Kovacs. The company announced Sprint as a partner, but didn’t give any details and Kovacs said the U.S. probably won’t see its first Firefox OS devices until 2014.

The company brought together several of its early partners in Barcelona to show the progress it has made in the months since it first unveiled the Firefox OS project.

The browser maker is looking to create for the phone an operating system similar to what Google is trying on the desktop with Chrome OS. It has been showing previews of the software since last year and last month said it was readying preview hardware for developers to begin testing apps.

Mozilla is among a number of companies seeking to provide an alternative to Android and iOS. It’s a crowded field, though, that includes BlackBerry, Microsoft and Canonical.

Among those slated to be on hand for the company’s press conference include the chiefs of carriers Deutsche Telekom, Telekom Italia, Telnor and Telefónica as well as Paul Jacobs, CEO of chipmaker Qualcomm.

We’ll have live coverage of the event when it kicks off around 9 am PT on Sunday. And Mozilla chief Gary Kovacs will have more to say about Firefox when he appears in April as part of our D: Dive Into Mobile conference.

5:36 pm Barcelona time: The event won’t begin for another 20 minutes or so, but the information is starting to trickle out. Among the additional partner names that have cropped up here at the event is Sprint.

5:47 pm: Telefonica R&D CEO Carlos Domingo is getting mobbed by reporters, most of whom want to get a photo of the Firefox OS phone he is holding.

5:49 pm: It looks like device makers LG, Huawei, ZTE and Alcatel One Touch are on board as well.

Alcatel, LG and ZTE will build the first devices, with Huawei’s first Firefox OS phones coming on later in the year.

Here’s ZTE’s phone:

Which looks to be headed to Telefonica’s movistar brand.

Telefonica plans a broad launch with devices headed to Brazil, Colombia, Spain and Venezuela around mid-year with more European and Latin American countries later in the year and into 2014. It will have models from Alcatel One Touch, LG and ZTE.

Here’s a look at an Alcatel model:

6:09 pm: Firefox CEO Gary Kovacs kicks off the company’s press conference with a shout out to the company’s co-founders Mitchell Baker and Brendan Eich, who are in the audience.

6:10 pm: Kovacs has some trouble advancing his slides, quips he is using an iPhone to control them.

Kovacs notes that when the company announced its phone OS plans last year it had only a couple early partners and it now has support from 17 carriers and several hardware makers.

6:12 pm: “We’re on the edge of unlocking mobile,” Kovacs says.

6:14 pm: Kovacs notes that his company isn’t profit-driven and won’t be with Firefox OS; the company’s goal is just to keep the Web at the center of things. That will keep power from being concentrated in one or two app stores, to allow lots of over-the-top services and support Web standards.

There shouldn’t be one or two companies that can approve the content seen by billions of people.

“That’s a broken model and it needs to change,” he said.

Kovacs asks all the partners at the event to stand, noting that it’s not easy to support version one of a product.

“I know you are not timid,” he said. “I’m on the phone with you.”

Initial handset makers, as we noted, are ZTE, Alcatel One Touch, LG and Huawei.

“There are more coming,” he said.

6:16 pm: Speaking now is Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs touting HTML5. (Of course, Qualcomm’s chips also power a ton of Android phones and all Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 devices.)

6:25 pm: Demo time.

Things start out simple and easy, says Firefox’s Jay Sullivan. That’s because most Firefox OS customers will be coming from feature phones.

There will be a Firefox Marketplace to highlight Web apps, but the company isn’t asking developers to do anything different.

“We’re not looking to create a new ecosystem,” Sullivan said.

Among the early Web apps for the Firefox Marketplace are: AccuWeather, AirBnB, Box, Cut the Rope, Facebook, MTV Brasil, Pulse News, SoundCloud, SporTV, Terra, Time Out and Twitter.

And maps are kind of important, Sullivan notes, adding that Firefox has been working with Nokia to make sure its Here Maps work well under Firefox OS.

6:29 pm: Sullivan notes that even though Firefox OS is Web-based lots of things can be cached, even running in Airplane mode. He demos it with an issue of Time Out Barcelona stored for offline reading.

And while Mozilla will have a marketplace, they won’t be the only one, meaning there can be lots of vertical marketplaces as well as the option for device makers to distribute directly.

Mozilla also has an open model for payments, including a carrier billing option.

6:36 pm: Sullivan touting ability to dynamically configure phone for a point in time, like having a bunch of movie-related content for Oscar night without requiring a user to visit an app store.

6:39 pm: Now Mozilla is trotting out the carriers supporting Firefox OS, starting with Franco Bernabe, CEO of Telecom Italia, followed by Telefonica CEO Cesar Alierta.

Telefonica plans to introduce Firefox OS devices in many markets this year and in all of its markets around the world by the end of next year.

“Duopolies are not beneficial for any industry” and Firefox OS should help, Alierta said.

6:53 pm: Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann said that his company will launch first in Poland this summer and then expand to other Eastern European markets, if all goes well there.

Latin American carrier America Movil said it plans to launch Firefox OS devices in all the countries where it operates.

6:55 pm: Q and A time.

Asked how Firefox OS will stand out from Android and iOS devices, Kovacs said that they can deliver mid- to high-end smartphone performance for the price of a high-end feature phone.

In terms of the United States, Kovacs said the company has plans for its home market. “We have partners lined up,” he said. “It’s not the first launch country,” he added, saying devices are likely in the U.S. next year.

Notably, Sprint — which is listed as a partner — didn’t speak at the event, which just wrapped up.

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The two “developer preview” devices are being created in partnership with Geeksphone and Spanish carrier Telefonica. Telefonica has already said it will support the Web-based operating system on commercial devices expected later this year.

“Developer preview phones will help make the mobile web more accessible to more people,” Mozilla said in a blog posting on Tuesday. “Developers are critical to the web and to Mozilla’s mission to make the web accessible to everyone.”

The preview devices are unlocked. The low-end model, dubbed Keon, features a Qualcomm S1 processor and 3.5-inch touchscreen, among other features. A higher-end model, Peak, features a dual-core Qualcomm chip and a 4.3-inch screen.

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs will talk more about the Firefox OS project when he takes the stage at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference in April.

It has won the support of a crew of global carriers, with the first Firefox OS phones set to launch early next year in Brazil, through Telefónica’s Vivo.

Firefox OS is to be an open mobile platform where every app and function is based on HTML5, with none of the so-called “native apps” specific to a particular operating system.

Want to make a call? HTML5. Want to send a message? HTML5. Want to play a game? HTML5.

The push toward HTML5 as a broader mobile platform comes at a time when some early advocates seem to be moving away from mobile Web applications out of frustration with their performance. For instance, the new version of the Facebook iPhone app has reportedly been rebuilt specifically for iOS to make it much faster. Previous versions had been built around HTML5 in the interest of compatibility across fragmented mobile platforms.

But Mozilla is doubling down on the Web. The named reference to Mozilla’s biggest brand is purposeful. Much as the Firefox browser targeted Internet Explorer, so Firefox OS is a major project meant to disrupt the existing smartphone leaders.

In this case, that’s iOS, Android and Windows Phone — where the operating systems and apps are not as open and compatible as Mozilla and its partners would like.

Firefox OS isn’t going to try to compete with the high end of the market, but rather with entry-level phones at relatively low prices, Mozilla has said. The thrust is to engage first-time smartphone users in emerging markets around the world.

The carrier partners on record supporting the project are now Deutsche Telekom, Smart, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor and Etisalat.

Telefónica and Deutsche Telekom’s Innovation Labs had previously gone public with support for the project in February at Mobile World Congress.

The first Firefox OS devices will be made by TCL Communication Technology/Alcatel One Touch and ZTE, with Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm.

(All this makes for interesting timing for Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs to speak at our Dive Into Mobile conference in October in New York City.)

We’re headed to New York City for this gathering — our first one held in the Big Apple — with a lineup that is strongly focused on the globalization of mobile and its worldwide implications.

At the D10 conference, we announced Google mobile guru Andy Rubin, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs, but now there’s more:

First up, we have Mike “Schrep” Schroepfer, Facebook’s VP of engineering.

Facebook is unquestionably a mobile superpower — with more than 500 million mobile monthly active users as of April 2012. But mobile products and monetization of them are the company’s biggest weakness and potential source of competition.

No surprise — Facebook is currently in the process of transforming itself from a Web-first to a mobile-first mentality.

Schrep, who joined Facebook in 2008 from Mozilla, is a key steward of that shift, as Facebook builds its infrastructure, systems and engineering to be mobile-first.

With a couple of computer science degrees from Stanford, Schroepfer is on the board of Ancestry.com and is also a trustee of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

We’ve also landed Jan Koum, the co-founder and CEO of blockbuster cross-platform messaging app WhatsApp.

As a free texting alternative, WhatsApp has insane global scale. It’s the No. 1 paid app in more than 50 countries on iOS. And it’s now one of the Top 10 apps of all time on Android, with more than 50 million installs.

As Ina Fried and I started planning Dive Into Mobile, we were cautious about committing to app makers early in the process, given that the market is so incredibly volatile. But it’s pretty clear that the story of WhatsApp will still be compelling in late October.

Just to give you a sense of the acceleration of this app: As of February 2012, WhatsApp said it was sending two billion messages per day — having doubled from one billion just three months before.

Koum, a Yahoo alum, has somehow managed to keep WhatsApp almost entirely off the press and speaker circuit radar — while fending off acquisition offers aplenty, from what we hear. He’s only ever spoken on stage about WhatsApp at Mobile World Congress, where WhatsApp took home the award for best overall app.

Schrep and Koum join an already strong lineup of timely speakers:

Android head Rubin returns to the D stage to talk about where things are headed. In addition to finding out what tasty dessert follows Jelly Bean, Rubin is likely to talk about the challenges of chasing Apple, bringing Android to ever-lower prices, and its latest efforts to crack the tablet market.

Nokia chief Elop is in the midst of a bold but difficult transition, as he aims to remake the Finnish phone maker. The company’s Windows Phone effort has taken off more slowly then hoped, while its existing Symbian phone business has tailed off faster than expected, adding financial pressure to the big strategic shift.

The result is that Nokia has had to cut jobs, close plants and make other moves designed to give the company the resources it needs. While some cutting was an inevitable part of the transition, the most recent efforts involved deeper moves, including the killing off of the company’s next-generation Meltemi operating system for low-end phones.

Mozilla leader Kovacs has grand ambitions of building a standalone operating system for the open Web. He’s working with Telefónica to release HTML5 devices, which should be a well-timed topic this fall when Dive Into Mobile kicks off.

There will be a lot more to come, of course, including some extraordinary demos, so we’ll update our speaker list as soon as we have more news.

As with all D events, tickets are selling fast.

Also to keep on your radar is our second annual D: Dive Into Media conference, next February in Laguna Niguel, which is being run by ATD media ninja Peter Kafka. The conference will delve into the extraordinary changes the media business is undergoing in every sector — from television and film to music and publishing.

Mozilla is set to announce that it has signed a new three-year agreement for Google to be the default search option in its Firefox browser.

It’s a critical renewal for the Silicon Valley software maker, since its earlier deal with the search giant has been a major source of revenue to date.

The companies said the specific terms of the commercial agreement are not being released. But, in 2010, Google contributed 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue.

A previous version of the arrangement had expired at the end of November. Mozilla said at the time that it was in “active negotiations” with Google.

The relationship has not been without some tension of late. Since the first search royalty deal was signed in 2008, Google’s own Chrome browser has become a significant competitor. Just last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in global usage for the first time, according to StatCounter. Both browsers — software which is used to navigate the Internet — have about 25 percent market share.

Mozilla also has partnerships with other search providers, including Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.

Here’s the full announcement Mozilla will soon put out:

Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement for Default Search in Firefox

We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.

“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.

“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.

The specific terms of the commercial agreement are confidential and are not being released.

Firefox 5, now available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, includes more than 1,000 improvements, including better support for HTML5 and animated CSS, but there aren’t any major changes from the last version.

By contrast, Firefox 4 was released almost three years after Firefox 3, with various major releases called 3.5 and 3.6 along the way.

It seems a reasonable conclusion to say Mozilla is feeling the heat from its younger competitor, Google Chrome — which puts out a release every couple of months and is currently on version 12 — but the company has denied that it’s copying Google. Via Computerworld: “No one invented fast,” said Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox development, when asked whether Mozilla’s new rapid release scheme was a response to Google. “We’re developers, we want to get our features out there as quickly as possible.”

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs added today, according to CNET, “The world of the Internet is moving at a faster pace than ever, so we realized we had to start innovating faster.”

The tentative release date for Firefox 6 is August 16.

Yesterday, BoomTown paid a long overdue visit on the Mountain View, Calif., HQ of Mozilla, the unusual public-private company that makes the Firefox browser, to chat with its (relatively) new CEO Gary Kovacs (pictured here).

There is a lot to talk about with the new exec, especially the near-to-official launch of Firefox 4, the increasing coopetition with Google and its Chrome efforts and where Mozilla goes next (mobile).

Kovacs, in fact, has a deep mobile background, having arrived in the late fall of 2010 to take over from John Lilly, who moved on to a stint as a venture capitalist.

Before Mozilla, Kovacs worked on a range of products at Sybase–until after its purchase by SAP–and also on mobile and devices at Adobe. Before that, he played a key role at Zi Corporation, a company specializing in embedded software and services for mobile and consumer devices.

He’ll need all that expertise if Firefox is to do as well on mobile devices as it has in gaining market share on the desktop, an effort that has been challenged by a continual and intense effort at upgrade and improvement by No. 3 Google especially.

According to a recent poll, for example, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer holds the dominant 56 percent share, with Mozilla’s Firefox at almost 23 percent and Google at just above 10 percent. Apple’s Safari and Opera follow.

Of course, Firefox has been playing nicer with Chrome cousin Android, which is beginning to dominate the smartphone market and is moving aggressively into the tablet arena. In fact, Mozilla just released a new beta in the marketplace for Google’s mobile operating system.

Still, some have fretted as Mozilla delayed its official release of Firefox 4 several times since last fall.

Nonetheless, by dislodging IE from its dominant market position, Firefox has proved not only that open-source projects can provide better software, but that it’s possible for a particularly well done one to become an everyday consumer application.

Despite its success, Mozilla still has to keep up its innovation and technical prowess. But given its unusual status as both a profit and nonprofit, it is hindered in that it is not likely to go public and shower its Silicon Valley employees with giant gobs of overhyped stock.

In the video below, Kovacs talks about Mozilla’s relationship with Google (not easy!), feature improvements in Firefox 4 (a new Chromish user interface!), how to hold onto talent in Silicon Valley (also not easy!) and what it’s like to deal with Apple (definitely not easy!).

Enjoy:

The new company, as Raskin described it, will attempt to tighten feedback loops (so that users can more immediately know the effects of their efforts to be healthy), make data actionable and create better-designed personal health tools so users can take better care of themselves.

Massive Health’s CEO and co-founder is Sutha Kamal, who previously was managing director of mobile for TransGaming Technologies. A third co-founder hasn’t been named yet, nor have the “top investors in the world” who are backing the company, according to its Web site.

Raskin, who previously founded Songza and Humanized, the latter of which Mozilla bought in order to hire him, said in a blog post,

Each of us has a unique ability. I want to use mine—the knowledge to make products which are disruptively easier and more enjoyable to use—to change people’s lives. Life-changing not in the sense of a new social website or better email, but in making people’s lives materially better by helping them get and stay healthy. Anyone that’s been sick, overweight, or had to deal with a doctor knows that health is a field in dire need of humane design.

Mozilla has been going through some changes recently, most notably the growth of Google Chrome and the naming of new Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs, who was previously at Sybase and Adobe. Kovacs joined the company after previous CEO John Lilly decided he wanted to become a VC at Greylock Partners.

Update: Raskin said in a phone interview that he felt his work as a designer on Firefox was coming to a close now that the user experiences he created, like the personal organization tool Panorama, are bring deployed. It’s now a matter of “final iterations of polish,” he said. As for Massive Health, he said to expect the company’s first mobile app to be out next year.