Blake Ross
Blake Ross is one of the youngest internet-millionaires in the world, thought to be worth around $120 million. He rose to fame after he founded and developed the Mozilla Firefox web-browser with his colleague David Hyatt.
Ross was born in Miami, Florida in 1985, and by the age of 10 he had already created his first website. He always had an interest in computer program development, and at the age of 14 he was already contributing to Netscape’s open-source browser software, fixing bugs for the Mozilla Organisation, a group that had been set up by Netscape to maintain the development of their browsers.
While attending high school, Ross interned at Netscape, working with the Mozilla Organisation in their development of ‘Mozilla Suite’, a software package that attempted to combine web-browsing, email, website development and more. However, Ross and Hyatt were unconvinced by the browser they were working on, and decided to develop their own alternative, with the aim of creating a simpler, more user-friendly browser, without the extras found in Mozilla Suite. Due to trademark issues, the new browser went through several different names; starting as Phoenix, changing to Firebird, then finally settling on Firefox.
The new open-source browser created by Ross and Hyatt gained popularity incredibly quickly, leading to Mozilla switching resources and funding from Mozilla Suite to the development of Firefox. Eventually, Version 1 of Mozilla Firefox was released in November 2004, when Blake Ross was still just 19 years old.
Firefox was a huge success upon its release, coinciding with a time when many people were beginning to see Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as unsecure against the ever-developing viruses, malware and hackers threatening computers worldwide. Many users seemed to be looking for an alternative, and Firefox reached 1million downloads on its first day alone, 10million after 10 days and 100million downloads less than a year after its release. As of May 2010, Firefox is reported to account for almost 25% of the market, a figure that has been steadily rising since its release more than 5 years ago.
A popular feature of Firefox is its customisability; users can change the appearance of their browser, as well as downloading ‘add-ons’, which perform small functions designed to allow users to complete tasks more easily, or to integrate with other programmes or websites. For example, add-ons can be downloaded to integrate media players such as iTunes into the web-browser, or to track products being sold or bought on eBay without having to navigate to the website itself.
After Firefox, Blake Ross and another colleague began work on a new piece of software; an integrated browser and operating system name Parakey. However, this software was bought by Facebook in 2007, and now Blake Ross, still only 24, works for Facebook as a ‘Director of Product’.
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