Add to iTunesJohn Lilly - CEO, Mozilla
Introduction
On this episode of Read/WriteTalk I sit down with John Lilly, the new CEO of Mozilla Corp. John has been at Mozilla since 2005, but recently was promoted from COO to take over as CEO. John published a very thoughtful post announcing his new role. In the interview we review both the lessons he’s learned at Mozilla and his plans for the organization in the future. I also think many of the leaders at DataPortability.org will find his comments quite interesting 
Links
- John’s Blog
- The Mozilla Corporation
- Read/WriteWeb: Mozilla Weaves Web Platform for User Data
- DataPortability.org
- Participatory Culture Foundation
Transcript
| Sean Ammirati: Ok, so today I have John Lilly. The new CEO of the Mozilla Corporation on ReadWriteTalk. John’s been at Mozilla for a couple of years. He joined in 2005 but was recently promoted to be the CEO of Mozilla. So, I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today, John.John Lilly: Yes. Thank you, Sean.
Sean Ammirati: I want to drill in a little bit to the things you’ve learned at Mozilla. And first, for some helpful context. Could you just start by getting quickly your background before you joined in 2005? John Lilly: Sure, of course. I’ve been in California for a while. Technical background, computer science and E.E. Then I focused my masters work on user interface. So building products that people really like. I’ve spent time in media interface groups. Enterprise software. I’ve spent some time in Apple labs merely getting Java and applications servers and that kind of stuff.And then I’ve been an entrepreneur since then. I have a share of my won company called Reactivity. I’ve been the CEO for a while. And then as we grew I became CTO. And that was ultimately an XML security company that sold products to big companies like Fidelity and GM. Lots of those but I was the CTO there. |
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| 01:16 | I got to know Mozilla a little bit through one of my investors in my last company which is named Mitch Kapor. Of course the founder of Lotus. And I got to know Mitchell Baker who’s been running the project for quite sometime. And then I joined Mozilla in 2005 after I left my last company now looking to do something.
Sean Ammirati: Cool! So you’ve been there for a couple of years first as a VP and then a COO? What’s the thing that surprised you most in your time at Mozilla? |
| 02:13 | John Lilly: Gosh! That is interesting! Mozilla is such an unconventional organization and an unconventional movement.It’s hard to pinpoint anyone. I think the thing that I liked the most but I guess I’d give respect particularly is that I can go literally anywhere in the world and people know Firefox. That people use Firefox or part of people’s lives whether it’s Beijing or Tokyo or Paris or Geneva or Brazil, any place really.Anywhere you go, there are Firefox users or Thunderbird users. And there are vibrant communities who really care and really feel like they’re part of making this thing. That is one of our core principles is that, keeping it open and important, keeping it web-participatory by anyone who wants to participate in the web usually is really key. So we can spend a lot of time making sure there are softwares in many languages as possible. So we launch Firefox through 37 several languages. Yes, I think just the massive global scale that we’re at I think is really fun. I mean the other thing, it’s just the leverage is amazing. |
| 03:07 | Around the world, we go about 150 employees in all our organizations around the world. We have around 150 million users. So that’s about a million users for every employee. That was a surprise leverage for me.
Sean Ammirati: That actually is amazing! That’s a great answer. So you’ve said it’s a little bit of a non-traditional company, I want to drill into that a little bit. You’re blog post when you announced your new job at Mozilla, you talked about four upcoming priorities. And the fourth one was “increase communications about how we’re thinking about economic sustainability”.And you talked about how you think some of these things could be helpful to other hybrid organizations. I’d love to have you just drill down on that a little bit. And talk about some of the things that you think some of these other hybrid organizations could learn from the Mozilla Foundation. |
| 4:04 | John Lilly: Sure! Well there is a lot for us to learn from them and then to learn from us. The examples that I’d give you, one I’m on the board of the Participatory Culture Foundation. It’s an makes a thing called the Miro video player. They’re trying to figure out how to fund their non-profit mission work through video advertising revenue. And then the organization I think is quite a good example of hybrid organizations is Kiva.org. Who is trying to make microloans in developing worlds, in developing countries, excuse me.I think that web-defined hybrids is they’re these mission-oriented organizations who are using market mechanisms to fund themselves. So that might be advertising or subscription models. And that kind of stuff as opposed to traditional non-profits that go to foundations or the government for grants and handouts. |
| 05:03 | I think that posture is primarily to grants or handouts I think puts you in a little bit of a weak position with respect to the market. It means you have to really look like a non-profit. You can’t really compete in the market along with more commercial companies. So my sense is that, there are the growing set of these companies and all of us I think are having angst for certain decisions.Three years ago before we built, and this is before my time, three years ago before we put Google in the browser, we quickly put the Google search, Yahoo! search in the browser. Not because it got us to make money but because it’s what the users wanted. It made a superior web browser experience. And it turns out that it’s also funded. It funded a lot of work since then. But I think up to that point there’s a lot of hand rigging and people really weren’t sure whether that introduction of some commercial components was going to somehow taint the stuff that we produce. |
| 06:14 | I think the results are self-evident. It was very, very good. But I think that other organizations probably PCF will try to figure out whether its kosher or not use advertising to support their model.I think that organizations like Wikimedia foundation too, that they steadfastly refused advertising to support their content. That is a decision that they’ve made and it’s a totally legitimate decision. I don’t know if it’s a decision they should make or whether they should feel bad about looking for commercial sources for revenue or not.In any event, I think this is a growing movement companies. That I think we are still all struggling for language on how to talk about what we do, on how to describe it, on how to recruit, on how to be successful. We get a fair amount of attention of the press these days. And a lot of times, people don’t know whether to compare us to very, very commercial organizations like Google and Apple and Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Compared to whom we look very small against. |
| 07:22 | Whether the comparison now or compares against the Red Cross or a soup kitchen and Amnesty International - more traditional non-profits. I think that either type of comparison are not quite right. I think we’re more of a third leg. And so I think that as key organizations emerged, we’re all finding language to talk about it. On the language, we’ll start to do it more, encourage it more in the States and of course all around the world.
Sean Ammirati: Yes. I think that’s really helpful for the non-profit organizations. Another kind of thing I’m curious about, I picked up from it from from this goal as well as. What about the commercial organizations? Are there things that, maybe not Google per se, but these commercial enterprises can learn from your experience from the way Mozilla runs. And obviously you’ve been part of Start ups before, so you have some experience in commercial companies. Are there things that you think those leaders can learn as well from Mozilla? |
| 08:25 | John Lilly: Yes, yes. Of course, of course. I think that participation is the key. Empowerment is the key. I mentioned that for Firefox 2 we shipped in 37 languages on the first day, on the day of release. By comparison, Microsoft which presumably have more employees than we have here. They shipped Internet Explorer just English on first day.Yes, they rolled out more languages the following weeks. But it took them a very, very long time to catch up the language barrier. I’m not sure if they’re there yet. But we have many few employees that were able to provide software to the world in many more languages. |
| 09:05 | Well in my point of view, it’s all about participation. So letting people who want to get involved and put things into their own language. It’s self-determination of languages. That’s a key. My own two cents for that, I’d stop thinking about users as users or sources of consumer generated content. And here it’s really like parts of the ecosystem. That’s a pretty fundamental thing which you should like get on right.
Sean Ammirati: Yes I agree. It’s a good point. Hopefully an interesting one for our listeners. That was really helpful in terms of reflecting on your time at Mozilla so far. I’d like to transition and just ask you a couple of questions about the future of Mozilla. The first one is, you have lots of projects going on at the Mozilla labs. And I realized this is somewhat like the question asked in a parent what their favorite child is. But out of those projects, what are the ones you’re |
| 10:11 | John Lilly: Well, I think the Labs aside, I’ll talk about Firefox 3 first?
Sean Ammirati: Sure. John Lilly: Ok. In Firefox 3 is the killer browser. And I think I’ve been using the Beta since Beta 1 and Beta 2 is even better. Even in the Beta, we’ve surpassed the quality of Firefox 2. So I already encouraged my mom and my grandmother to update their Firefox 3 Beta 2. I thinks it’s a killer product. It holds up in a lot of new areas. It works well on Mac, on Linux and works well in Windows as always.On labs, there are two things in particular. I’m really excited about the efforts on mobile were working on. I think a lot of folks wondered what about what we’re going to give mobile. And we’ve waited for a pretty long time. But we really felt like we needed to wait until the industry started to open-up a little bit. |
| 11:06 | Cellular treatment is very, very close. To control by carriers and manufacturers just of late have started helping up to the rise of Linux in handhelds, and that kind of stuff. We’re optimistic that we’re going to be able to make a big difference there. But I guess the other project that we just announced or just being experiments are something called “Weave”. It’s usually cloud-based services for the browser.If you think about keeping your history or your bookmarks or your searches. Historically or today, currently, you know the only way to do that is through a commercial service like .Mac or Google Browser Synch or something. And we think that Mozilla can put up a server that doesn’t lose anything, commercially work with data and let’s people use this type of services. Let’s broker the browser to third party services and that kind of stuff. So I think that cloud-computing to support your browser as your browser does more and more essential in terms of moving applications. I’m really excited about that. It’s still early to say though. |
| 12:19 | Sean Ammirati: The Weave project is interesting. And it’s something that we’ve covered a lot at Read/Write Web or a couple of times at least. How does that relate in your mind to the DataPortability.org stuff?
John Lilly: Oh yes, that’s a good question. Yes we’ve talked about that this week. So I suspect that we’ll start to participate DataPortability.org.They’ve got to start doing something sooner or later. So like doing the actual work there is going to be the key. Of course OAUTH and that kind of stuff we’ve starting to experiments with. That stuff will be very important for Weave. So I suspect we will start to participate in dataportability.org, but we haven’t yet. |
| 13:05 | Sean Ammirati: Cool! I think that’s an answer our listeners will be excited about.So I know we only have a couple of minutes here. There’s two more questions that are mirrors of each other that I thought would also be interesting. And I think it will give some insight into where Mozilla’s heading.But I’d like you just to talk for a moment about the things that both concern you most about the web as you look into the future. And the things you’re most optimistic or excited about. So independent of Mozilla projects, just what are the trends on the web that you’re both most concerned by and then also most optimistic or excited about?John Lilly: Yes. I guess there are a couple. One is that, it’s an increasing trend around censorship of government. So clearly obvious, ever since I think about the Great Firewall in China and others. There’s also in australian government just passed the law allowing censors on video online. That I think will result in real censorship in the country. And so I worry about that a little bit. |
| 14:10 | The second thing I worry about and in particular in developing markets especially in China. I worry about the prevalence of spyware and malware. I think that you can if you spend any amount of time on “normal user’s” computer in China. They’re all ruined run by malware. They got in through mostly through Windows and IE, in toolbars for IE and that kind of stuff.And I think if you don’t fix that situation in China, it’s very possible that consumers in China will initially say it’s such a terrible experience. Their expectations will get so lowered that they’ll look for other close garden kind of ways to interact.And I think the third thing is that, I’m going to be actually a little bit funny about, is I’m worried that close stacks are on the rise. |
| 15:15 | So I carry around an iPhone. I like it very much. I bought it an Amazon Kindle which is one of my new favorite devices. It’s like I read a lot about a dozen books on my Kindle but it’s smaller than a paper book. It’s sort of wonderful in that respect. But both my iPhone and my Kindle closed stacks. The iPhone controls the experience from the hardware to the operating system to the software to the media store. And Amazon’s the same way with the kindle.And I think that we really need to try hard to make sure that many of these systems are as open as possible or open alternatives exist. Because as soon as you control too much of the whole stack, you start to get your media and your experience and your connection to the internet mediated through a company. |
| 16:07 | In getting media through a company, any company. No matter how good they are, you got a particular point of view that may or may not be obvious when you’re looking at it. So I worry about those things.In terms of things that I’m excited about, I’m excited about all sorts of things. I think the connectivity and humanity of the web is better than ever. Reading about, last year the coup in Bangkok happened. They filed blogs from inside Bangkok after the media black out started.That’s pretty amazing. And you guys you think it helps people understand and get you together. I’m really excited about the participation that’s happening in the blog level across the world. It’s beginning so easy now to get your voice. But it’s in text or video or anything really. And that’s a key social phenomenon. |
| 17:09 | And I guess just like the browser, I’m excited that more and more of my applications are getting delivered through browsers. My mom even asked, what spreadsheet she’s should use for her Mac. And I pointed her half a dozen free online spreadsheets that she didn’t have to install or didn’t have to pay for. It just worked right out of the box for her browser. For her, for my grandparents, like that’s all making a very, very big difference. I’m excited about a lot of things. I’m probably forgetting what I’m most excited about but those are a few.
Sean Ammirati: That’s great! That’s great! So to end in this thing and optimistic things. You talked about being excited about Firefox 3. Just to brief us to that as we wrap this up, any specific features that you want to point to come out in Firefox 3 that you’re particularly excited about. |
| 18:03 | John Lilly: Yes. The first thing is, we are trying not to overload users with a lot of new features. We’ve done a lot of stream lining. A few years ago we cam out with Firefox 1. It was a good’s a good product, but it was 1.0. With Firefox 2 we started adding a lot of what people were expecting. And then I think Firefox 3 really represents a streamlining and a maturation of the user interface. But it really means it fits into the Mac. The Macintosh theme really works. We have Linux system integration and icons. I think that it’s going to feel like a much better product to people, especially people who give you aren’t so techy. But I think it will retain all the openness that the techy population, like myself, like.The one featured that everybody really likes, other than the fact that the memory usage is better than ever and the performance is better than ever, is the URL bar. |
| 19:06 | Instead of just typing the URL and having it remind you what the URL is, you can type any word in the name of the document. Like if you went to a site about the Simpsons, you could just type Simpsons in the bar and it will show you all the sites with Simpsons in the title. And it’s just one example of maybe 15 different ways we’re helping people find the places they’ve been to before or the place that they want to get to.So I think navigation around the information space is getting increasingly important. The web is pervasive or humongous and getting larger. And just being able to find what you want, find what you’ve visited is the key. So I think that the colloquialism around here is to call it the awesome barinstead of the URL bar. That’s just one example of hundreds of hundreds of user interface tweaks that we’ve made. And I think are going to make a little difference to people. Sean Ammirati: Cool! Well that’s a great answer. It’s really a pleasure to have you on the podcast here. So good luck as you move in to your new role at Mozilla. And I really appreciate your time today, John. John Lilly: Yes. Thank you very much Sean. I appreciate the thoughtful of questions. Sean Ammirati: All right. Take care. |
January 15th, 2008 at 10:47 am
thank you very much,guys! very interesting reading. We all love FF!
January 15th, 2008 at 11:51 am
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January 15th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I am sure Mozillia will find the balance with its hybrid buisness model.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
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January 15th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
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