Mozilla Foundation names new CEO

Mozilla Foundation, which develops and distributes the immensely popular Mozilla Firefox web browser, is changing leaders. Mitch Baker will step down from the CEO post and hand the reigns over to John Lilly, a Standard-trained computer businessman who sold his company to Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) before joining Mozilla in 2005.

Lilly has said that he wants to go after new business as the CEO of the Mozilla Foundation, which may cause a moment of pause in the corporate offices of Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), which makes the 'Internet Explorer' web browser most of the world uses. However, Mozilla's competing Firefox web browser has gained quite a following and has slowly eroded Microsoft's web browser market share in the last three years.

So, when a successful internet entrepreneur comes to the corner office, you can bet more market and business development is not far behind. Although Mozilla has said unequivocally that it will not have an IPO to raise capital, the company is no doubt seeking to become a greater force in the web browser market. Considering there are legions of contributors to Mozilla's handful of open-source software projects that far outmass the Foundation's 150 employees, Mozilla has nowhere to go but up. To the hundreds of millions of internet-connected customers use web browsers every day, it's a market prime for the picking. Well, from Microsoft's orchards, that is.