Blake Aaron Ross (born June 12, 1985) is an American

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

who is best known for his work as the co-creator of the Mozilla Firefox web browser with Dave Hyatt. In 2005, he was nominated for ''

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

'' magazine's top Rave Award, Renegade of the Year, opposite

Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American businessman, computer engineer and computer scientist best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was chief executive officer of Google from 1997 until August 2001 when ...

Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (; born August 21, 1973) is an American computer scientist and businessman who co-founded Google with Larry Page. He was the president of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on D ...

and

Jon Stewart Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, November 28, 1962) is an American comedian, writer, producer, director, political commentator, actor, and television host. The long-running host of ''The Daily Show'' on Comedy Central from 1999 to 20 ...

. 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, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...

'' magazine's 2005 hot list. From 2007, he worked for

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

as Director of Product until resigning in early 2013.

Early life and education

Born on June 12th, 1985 in

Miami, Florida Miami is a East Coast of the United States, coastal city in the U.S. state of Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County in South Florida. It is the core of the Miami metropolitan area, which, with a populat ...

. He has an older brother and sister. Ross created his first website via

America Online 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, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo! Inc. The service tra ...

at the age of 10. By middle school, an interest in ''

SimCity ''SimCity'' is an open-ended city-building video game franchise originally designed by Will Wright. The first game in the series, '' SimCity'', was published by Maxis in 1989 and was followed by several sequels and many other spin-off ''S ...

'' led him to piece together a couple of rudimentary videogames. He attended high school in Miami at Gulliver Preparatory School, graduating in 2003 while simultaneously working for

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

, based in California. Ross graduated from Stanford University in 2007. He is of

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

descent.

Mozilla and Firefox

Ross is most well known for co-founding the Mozilla Firefox project with Dave Hyatt. 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 o ...

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 as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

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 to practice for a wide range of placements in businesses, non-profit organizations and g ...

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), Nets ...

at the age of 16. In 2003, he enrolled at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. While interning at Netscape, Ross became disenchanted with the browser he was working on and the direction given to it by

, 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 and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

project gained momentum and popularity, and in 2003 all of Mozilla's resources were devoted to the Firefox and Thunderbird projects. Released in November 2004, when Ross was 19, Firefox quickly grabbed market share (primarily from

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

), with 100 million downloads in less than a year. Ross is the author of ''Firefox For Dummies'' (; 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 and published 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''. In 2010, ''IEEE Spe ...

'' in November 2006. On July 20, 2007, the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

reported that

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. Ross took a job with Uber in August 2017.

Personal life

Ross has

aphantasia Aphantasia ( , ) is the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images. The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880, but has remained relatively unstudied. Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study ...

, a rare condition preventing him from visualizing things in his mind. In a blog post, Ross wrote:

I have never visualized anything in my entire life. I can’t "see" my father's face or a bouncing blue ball, my childhood bedroom or the run I went on ten minutes ago. I thought "counting sheep" was a
metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...
. I’m 30 years old and I never knew a human could do any of this.

In 2015, he wrote a

fan fiction Fan fiction or fanfiction, also known as fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF, is fiction typically written in an amateur capacity by fans as a form of fan labor, unauthorized by, but based on, an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted ...

original

screenplay A screenplay, or script, is a written work produced for a film, television show (also known as a '' teleplay''), or video game by screenwriters (cf. ''stage play''). Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of w ...

for the

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

television comedy series ''

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

'', which gained attention.

References

External links

* * *

Profiles

*
The Firefox Explosion
' — Wired magazine article by Josh McHugh on Firefox development history (published February 2005)

Interviews

*

' — interview with Byron Acohido for USA Today (published November 9, 2004) *
Interview with Firefox developer Blake Ross
' — interview with Michael Flaminio for Insanely Great Mac (published November 9, 2004) *
Full speed ahead: Mozilla Firefox browser blazes through globe
' — interview with Michelle Keller for Stanford Daily Article (published November 16, 2004) *
Firefox Architect Talks IE, Future Plans
' — interview with Nate Mook for BetaNews (published November 29, 2004) *
The Young Turk of Firefox
' — interview with Keith Ward for Redmond Magazine (published December 2004) *
Q&A With Blake Ross
' — interview with Computer Power User magazine (published January 2005) *
Interview — Blake Ross
' — interview with Non-Tech City (published May 27, 2005) *
Firefox Will Be Free Forever
' — interview with Xu Zhiqiang for OhmyNews (published August 7, 2005)
''The Firefox Kid''
— David Kushner's article on Ross and Parakey in IEEE Spectrum (published November 2, 2006) * Livingston, Jessica
Founders at work: stories of startups' early days
2007. Cf. Chapter 29, Blake Ross and Firefox. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ross, Blake 1985 births Living people American bloggers Web developers American computer programmers Facebook employees Mozilla developers Free software programmers Open source people Writers from Miami 20th-century American Jews Gulliver Preparatory School alumni 21st-century American Jews