Conversations with the most influential figures in media and technology.
May 25-27, 2009
Carlsbad, California
Featured Video
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Speaker
John Lilly 
CEO
Mozilla
As CEO of Mozilla, Lilly is responsible for guiding the product and organizational development efforts for Mozilla Corporation. Before becoming CEO, he was Mozilla's COO and focused primarily on day-to-day and international operations. Prior to his career at Mozilla, John was the founder, CTO and VP products of Reactivity, an XML Security company. He served as a senior scientist at Apple Computer's Research Labs, and has held positions at Trilogy Software, Sun Microsystems and HP, among other companies. Lilly is also on the board of the Open Source Application Foundation and Participatory Culture Foundation.
Posts With John Lilly
News Byte
Led by Greylock, Social App MessageMe Raises $10 Million
MessageMe, the mobile application that offers free text, photo and video messaging between smartphones, announced Tuesday that it had raised a $10 million round led by John Lilly of Greylock Partners — who will join the board of MessageMe makers LittleInc Labs — with participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, True Ventures, Social+Capital and others. The company said it currently has more than five million users on its service.
News Byte
Opinion-Sharing App Startup Polar Raises $1.2 Million
Polar, an app made for sharing opinions and polling your friends, announced a new funding round of $1.2 million today, and released a new version of the application, now available for download in Apple’s App Store. Investors in the round include Jerry Yang at AME Cloud Ventures (formerly of Yahoo, of course), John Lilly at Greylock Partners, Maynard Webb from Webb Investment Network, Ash Patel at Morado Ventures, Sam Pullara (formerly of Twitter) and others.
Viral Video: Rat Fingers, TouchFire and Sphero Demos
Here’s a demo of some cool and quirky gadgets for the holiday season.
Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs Talks Firefox 4, Competition With Google's Chrome and More! (Video)
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 competition with Google and its Chrome efforts and where Mozilla goes next (mobile).
Firefox Creative Lead Aza Raskin Leaves to Found Health Start-Up
Interface designer Aza Raskin announced today that at the end of the year he will leave Mozilla, where he is currently creative lead for Firefox, to found a new (and already funded) stealth personal health start-up called Massive Health.
News Byte
Mozilla Has a Brand New CEO
Mozilla welcomed a new CEO to the fold today. Gary Kovacs, who was previously a senior VP at Sybase and General Manager at Adobe, will be responsible for leading the development and direction of the Firefox Web browser. Kovacs replaces John Lilly, who announced in May that he would be stepping down, as first reported here by BoomTown’s Kara Swisher. Kovacs’s first day will be November 8.Exclusive: Mozilla CEO John Lilly to Step Down and Head to Greylock (Plus Departure Email!)
John Lilly, the well-regarded CEO of Mozilla, is preparing to give up his post at the open-source software nonprofit foundation, which is also a for-profit start-up. Lilly is moving to Greylock Partners as a venture partner, sources added, although the affable entrepreneur could eventually end up doing a start-up. While Mozilla makes a number of products, it is best known for its Firefox browser, whose share has steadily increased since it debuted in late 2004.
Firefox Reaches One Billion Downloads [UPDATED]
Once the plucky underdog in the browser battle, Mozilla’s Firefox is today the second most popular browser worldwide, after Internet Explorer. Since it was first released in November 2004, the browser has succeeded not just in dislodging IE from its dominant market position, but in proving that an open-source project can become a widely used consumer application. At 7:47 am PDT this morning, the browser reached its billionth download.
Mozilla Chairman Mitchell Baker and CEO John Lilly: The Full D7 Session
As CEO and chairman of Mozilla, respectively, John Lilly and Mitchell Baker have overseen the huge growth of Firefox, the popular open-source browser. The pair talk about this and more in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.
Mozilla Chairman Mitchell Baker and CEO John Lilly: The Full D7 Session
As CEO and chairman of Mozilla, respectively, John Lilly and Mitchell Baker have overseen the huge growth of Firefox, the popular open-source browser. The pair talk about this and more in an interview with Walt Mossberg at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.