Gary Kovacs (born 1963 or 1964) is a

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

technologist. He was the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

of AVG Technologies. Kovacs has worked for

Mozilla Corporation The Mozilla Corporation (stylized as moz://a) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser, by a global community of ope ...

, Adobe,

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, and IBM, and led

Zi Corporation Zi Corporation was a software company based in Calgary, Canada. The company was founded on 4 December 1987 as Cancom Ventures Inc, owning an Edmonton secretarial college and an industrial equipment rental business. On 30 August 1989 the name was c ...

, a mobile

text messaging Text messaging, or texting, is the act of composing and sending electronic messages, typically consisting of alphabetic and numeric characters, between two or more users of mobile devices, desktops/laptops, or another type of compatible comput ...

company.Alec 2012.

Early life

Kovacs was born in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

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, Canada, to Ruby (né Kiraly) and Janos (John) Kovacs. Kovacs's father was a Hungarian refugee who fled to Canada in 1956. Kovacs attended the

University of Calgary The University of Calgary (U of C or UCalgary) is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The University of Calgary started in 1944 as the Calgary branch of the University of Alberta, founded in 1908, prior to being ins ...

Haskayne School of Business The Haskayne School of Business is the University of Calgary's business school, located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It is named after Richard F. Haskayne, who gave one of the largest endowments to a business school in Canada. The school offers ...

, earning a

BComm A Bachelor of Commerce (abbreviated BComm or BCom; also, ''baccalaureates commercii'') is an undergraduate degree in business, usually awarded in Canada, Australia, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Ireland, New Zealand, Ghana, South Africa, Myanmar, ...

in 1990 and an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

in 1999.

Career

Kovacs spent more than 25 years in software and mobile technology. In addition to his undergraduate and graduate business degrees, Kovacs is a certified communications electronics technologist. Kovacs joined IBM in 1990, where he held leadership positions in product management, sales, marketing, and operations, eventually serving as Worldwide Program Director for the software division, based in New York.Prior 2010. After 10 years at IBM, Kovacs became President of Zi Corporation, a company that pioneered

predictive text Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a ''prediction'' rather than repeatedly ...

, among other mobile search and text input solutions. From 2000 to 2003, he helmed the company's successful creation and growth and provided strategic direction for its worldwide expansion. Kovacs moved to

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...

in 2003, working as Vice President of Product Marketing. When Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005, Kovacs became vice president and general manager of product management and marketing for Adobe's mobile and devices division, rising to General Manager of the entire division in 2008. From 2009 to 2010, Kovacs served as Senior Vice President of Markets, Solutions, and Products at Sybase, through its acquisition by

. After an extensive search for a new CEO in 2010,

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, w ...

selected Kovacs to replace former CEO John Lilly. Kovacs led the overall direction of the organization and the

Firefox 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 ...

web browser. During Kovacs' tenure Mozilla expanded into the

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market with the launch of

Firefox OS Firefox OS (project name: ''Boot to Gecko'', also known as ''B2G'') is a discontinued open-source operating system made for smartphones, tablet computers, smart TVs, and dongles designed by Mozilla and external contributors. It is based on the ...

, its

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mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typical laptops are "mobile", the operating systems used on ...

. Kovacs previewed Firefox OS at Mobile World Congress 2013, garnering commitments from 18 major worldwide mobile operators. In 2012, Kovacs negotiated a reported $1 billion deal renewing Mozilla's agreement to make

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

the default search engine in Firefox. Most notably, Firefox now offers Collusion, an add-on that enables users to view all third parties tracking their online activity, and in turn, to make more informed decisions about being tracked. The Ponemon Institute named Mozilla the "Most Trusted Internet Company For Privacy" for 2012. Kovacs is a frequent public speaker and panel member. His 2012 TED talk "Tracking the Trackers" explores issues of

Internet privacy Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storing, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Pr ...

in an increasingly connected world. At the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

Annual Meeting of the New Champions in 2012, he presented on strategies for creating a resilient cyber economy amid economic, security, and privacy obstacles. He was a keynote speaker at the Mobile World Congress 2013. Fierce Wireless named Kovacs one of the Rising Stars in Wireless for 2013. In April 2013 Mozilla announced that he would step down as CEO of the corporation later that year and until March 2014 he was part of Mozilla's board of directors. On July 30, 2013, Kovacs joined AVG Technologies as CEO. In September 2016, AVG Technologies was acquired by Avast Software for US$1.3B. Kovacs employment with AVG Technologies was terminated in December 2016 upon completion of the acquisition. On Dec. 11, 2018, Kovacs was appointed as CEO of Accela. Accela, which supplies regulatory software to government clients, was acquired by Berkshire Partners LLC, on Sep 28, 2017.

Personal life

Raised by Hungarian parents in Toronto, Kovacs began experimenting with technology at a young age. Though grateful for the opportunities and education provided by his native Canada, his interest in innovation drew him to the San Francisco Bay Area. He now lives in

Piedmont, California Piedmont is a small city located in Alameda County, California, United States, completely surrounded by the city of Oakland. Its residential population was 11,270 at the 2020 census. The name comes from the region of Piedmont in Italy, and it me ...

.“Gary Kovacs.”
CrowdRise.com. Retrieved 7 March 2013.

References

External links

Gary Kovacs bio at Wayback Machine (Mozilla.org)

Gary Kovacs announced as CEO of AVG Technologies
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kovacs, Gary 1960s births Living people Businesspeople from Toronto Canadian people of Hungarian descent Canadian technology chief executives Mozilla people Open source people University of Calgary alumni