Blake Aaron Ross (born June 12, 1985) is an American
software engineer
Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development.
A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term ''p ...
who is best known for his work as the co-creator of the
Mozilla Firefox internet browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
with
Dave Hyatt
David Hyatt (born 28 June 1972) is an American software engineer and a ''Shadowrun'' game expansion author. Employed by Apple starting in 2002, he was part of the Safari web browser and WebKit framework development team. He also helped develop ...
. In 2005, he was nominated for ''
Wired
''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fra ...
'' magazine's top Rave Award, Renegade of the Year, opposite
Larry Page
Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin.
Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unti ...
,
Sergey Brin
Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was th ...
and
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz; November 28, 1962) is an American comedian, political commentator, and television host. He hosted ''The Daily Show'', a satirical news program on Comedy Central, from 1999 to 2015 and now hosts ''Th ...
. He was also a part of ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' magazine's 2005 hot list. From 2007, he worked for
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
as Director of Product until resigning in early 2013.
Early life and education
Born in
Miami, Florida
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
, Ross was raised in
Key Biscayne, Florida
Key Biscayne is an island town in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The population was 12,344 at the 2010 census.
Key Biscayne lies south of Miami Beach and east of Miami. The village is connected to Miami via the Rickenbacker Causeway, originall ...
to a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family. His mother, Abby, is a psychologist, and his father David is a lawyer. He has an older brother and sister. Ross created his first website via
America Online
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
at the age of 10. By middle school, an interest in ''
SimCity
''SimCity'' is an open-ended city-building video game series originally designed by Will Wright. The first game in the series, ''SimCity'', was published by Maxis in 1989 and were followed by several sequels and many other spin-off "''Sim' ...
'' led him to piece together a couple of rudimentary videogames. He attended high school in Miami at
Gulliver Preparatory School
Gulliver Preparatory School or simply Gulliver Prep, is a private co-educational school. Its management offices are in Kendall, a census-designated place in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Its four campuses are across the county.
Previously the ad ...
, graduating in 2003 while simultaneously working for
Mozilla
Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...
, based in California.
Mozilla and Firefox
Ross is most well known for co-founding the Mozilla Firefox project with
Dave Hyatt
David Hyatt (born 28 June 1972) is an American software engineer and a ''Shadowrun'' game expansion author. Employed by Apple starting in 2002, he was part of the Safari web browser and WebKit framework development team. He also helped develop ...
. Ross discovered
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
very soon after it open-sourced and began contributing, his mother's frustrated user experience with
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...
being the main driver.
He worked as an
intern
An internship is a period of work experience offered by an organization for a limited period of time. Once confined to medical graduates, internship is used practice for a wide range of placements in businesses, non-profit organizations and gover ...
at
Netscape Communications Corporation
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
at the age of 16. In 2003, he enrolled at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. While interning at Netscape, Ross became disenchanted with the
browser he was working on and the direction given to it by
America Online
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
, which had recently purchased Netscape. Ross and Hyatt envisioned a smaller, easy-to-use browser that could have mass appeal, and Firefox was born from that idea. The
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
project gained momentum and popularity, and in 2003 all of Mozilla's resources were devoted to the Firefox and
Thunderbird
Thunderbird, thunder bird or thunderbirds may refer to:
* Thunderbird (mythology), a legendary creature in certain North American indigenous peoples' history and culture
* Ford Thunderbird, a car
Birds
* Dromornithidae, extinct flightless birds ...
projects. Released in November 2004, when Ross was 19, Firefox quickly grabbed market share (primarily from
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
's
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...
), with 100 million downloads in less than a year.
Ross is the author of ''
Firefox For Dummies
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...
'' (; published January 11, 2006).
Career
Ross founded a new startup with another ex-Netscape employee,
Joe Hewitt (the creator of Firebug who was also largely responsible for Firefox's interface and code). Ross and Hewitt worked on creating
Parakey
Parakey is a web-based computer user interface proposed by Firefox contributors Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. Ross describes it as "a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do." The idea behind it is to make image, video, and writi ...
, a new user interface designed to bridge the gap between the desktop and the web. Ross revealed several technical details about the program and his new company when featured on the cover of ''
IEEE Spectrum
''IEEE Spectrum'' is a magazine edited by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
The first issue of ''IEEE Spectrum'' was published in January 1964 as a successor to ''Electrical Engineering''. The magazine contains peer-reviewe ...
'' in November 2006.
On July 20, 2007, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
had purchased Parakey.
In early 2013, Ross left Facebook to pursue other interests.
In 2015, Ross wrote a spec screenplay for HBO's Silicon Valley.