Mozilla Names Chris Beard Interim CEO, Appointed to the Board

In an effort to move as far away from the company’s decision to appoint Brendan Eich as CEO of Mozilla and his quick resignation, Mozilla has today announced that Chris Beard will be joining the Board of Directors at Mozilla, and will become the company’s new interim CEO. In a blog post announcing the changes, Mitchell Baker, Executive Chairwoman at Mozilla, sang the following praises of Baker:

We began exploring the idea of Chris joining the Board of Directors some months ago. Chris has been a Mozillian longer than most. He’s been actively involved with Mozilla since before we shipped Firefox 1.0, he’s guided and directed many of our innovative projects, and his vision and sense of Mozilla is equal to anyone’s. I have relied on his judgement and advice for nearly a decade. This is an excellent time for Chris to bring his understanding of Mozilla to the Board.

While there’s no word on how long Chris Beard will be sitting as active CEO (his interim title suggests there will be a replacement sooner rather than later), Beard will be guiding Mozilla on a path through a rapidly changing web. Usage of Mozilla’s biggest and most successful project, Firefox, has been waning faster than the effects of a morning coffee by noon time; the company has cancelled all plans to develop a version of Firefox native for Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 8, and Firefox OS has yet to really prove itself in the crowded smartphone market.