Mozilla Makes Andreas Gal, Who Helped Launch Firefox OS, Its New CTO

Providing yet more evidence of how committed it is to its Firefox OS mobile platform, Mozilla has named Andreas Gal, an engineer who spearheaded and helped launch Firefox OS, as its new CTO. Gal, of course, will take the CTO spot that was left by Mozilla's Brendan Eich, who subsequently stepped down from a CEO spot due to controversy over his contributions to support California's Proposition 8.

Dr. Andreas Gal is now Chief Technology Officer as well as VP of Mobile at Mozilla. According to a blog post about his appointment:

"Andreas is widely recognized as an authority on web technology and as a strong technical leader. He joined Mozilla over six years ago to apply his Ph.D. research to significantly advance the Javascript engine that powers Firefox with just-in-time compilation and since then has played key roles in virtually all of our major technology initiatives, including Firefox OS, Rust, Servo, pdf.js and Shumway."

"Andreas will have responsibility for leading technical decision making, representing Mozilla externally on technology, and managing our R&D programs.  He will also continue to serve as VP Mobile as we continue to focus our efforts on delivering and scaling Firefox OS."

Mozilla is continuing to double down its plans to become a big player in the smartphone business with the Firefox OS mobile operating system, and is retaining its focus on emerging markets.  At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Mozilla officials also made headlines as they revealed plans to take the Firefox OS mobile platform to devices other than smartphones, and a new deal between Panasonic and Mozilla will also drive smart, HTML 5-fluent televisions.

According to Mozilla, Gal has "a strong voice in the technology that underlies the Web platform and provides the foundation upon which the world builds products and services to bring that mission to life is critical."

The announcement was made by Chris Beard, who has been named Mozilla's acting CEO. Andreas Gal is shown in the photo above.