Mozilla Shakes Up Leadership As Mitchell Baker Leaves

Mozilla has shaken up its leadership structure as the organization struggles to regain market share, with co-founder Mitchell Baker leaving.

Once one of the most popular web browser—and single-handedly responsible for breaking Internet Explorer’s browser monopoly—Mozilla Firefox now has a market share in the mid-single digits, hovering around 6.26% in January 2025. Mozilla has been working to broaden its appeal, rolling out (and sometimes canceling) a number of services. The organization has also been working to diversify its revenue stream, especially since the vast majority of its revenue comes from its Google search deal, a deal that is under threat as a result of Google being declared a search monopoly.

In a blog post, Mozilla’s Mark Surman addressed the challenges the organization is facing, along with what it is doing to address those changes.

We’ve recognized that Mozilla faces major headwinds in terms of both financial growth and mission impact. While Firefox remains the core of what we do, we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term; and creating online fundraising campaigns that will draw a bigger circle of supporters over the long run. Mozilla’s impact and survival depend on us simultaneously strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND manifesting our mission in fresh ways. That is why we’re working hard on all of these fronts.

We’ve also moved aggressively to attract new leadership and talent to Mozilla. This includes major growth in our Boards, with 40% new Board members since we began our efforts to evolve and grow back in 2022. We’ve also been bringing in new executive talent, including a new MoFo Executive Director and a Managing Partner for Mozilla Ventures. By the end of the year, we hope to have new, permanent CEOs for both MoCo and Mozilla.ai.

The organization created the Mozilla Leadership Council, with the group focused on better coordinating working across Mozilla’s organizations and groups.

Mozilla also announced three new board members, who Surman says reflects the organization’s “secret sauce” for future plans, with “mix experience bridging business, technology and the public interest.” The new board members are:

• The new MoFo Board Chair is Nicole Wong. Nicole is a respected cross-sector privacy and policy expert and innovator, with leadership roles at Google and Twitter/X, service as Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer and positions on multiple corporate and non-profit boards. Nicole has been on MoFo’s Board for 8 years.
• Kerry Cooper will chair MoCo. One of the world’s most respected CMO’s and consumer executives, Kerry has held C-Suite roles at Walmart.com, Rothy’s, Choose Energy and more, and now serves on boards spanning venture, startups and AI innovation. Kerry has been on MoCo’s Board for 2 years.
• Raffi Krikorian will chair Mozilla.ai. Raffi is a visionary technologist, engineer and leader, who was an early engineering leader at Twitter, headed Uber’s self-driving car lab, and is now CTO at the Emerson Collective where he works at the intersection of emerging technologies and social good. He brings three decades of thoughtful design and implementation within social media and artificial intelligence to Mozilla.

Mitchell Baker Departs

An interesting development is the departure of Mitchell Baker, one of Mozilla’s co-founders.

With these changes, Mitchell Baker ends her tenure as Chair and a member of MoFo and MoCo boards. In co-founding Mozilla, Mitchell built something truly unique and important—a global community and organization that showed how those with vision can shape the world and the future by building technology that puts the needs of humans and humanity first. We are extremely grateful to Mitchell for everything she has done for Mozilla and we are committed to continuing her legacy of fighting for a better future through better technology. I know these feelings are widely shared across Mozilla —we are incredibly appreciative to Mitchell for all that she has done.

Baker previously resigned as CEO of Mozilla in February 2024, with the company subsequently shifting gears to refocus on Firefox, including making it the best browser available and regaining market share.

Baker’s departure, along with the new board appointments, further solidifies Mozilla’s shift to a new direction, one that will hopefully see Firefox regain some of its former glory. As we have pointed out at WPN many times, Mozilla remains one of the most important tech companies in the world and continues to stand out as one of the few that truly fights for user privacy and digital rights.

With Google’s recent changes, in which the company has wholly embraced digital fingerprinting, organizations like Mozilla are more important than ever and give users the ability to reclaim some of their privacy.

Hopefully, Mozilla’s changes will help put the company on course for a resurgence.

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