Blake Ross was born in Florida and throughout his childhood he took an interest in computers as well as web design. At age 10 he created his first website through American Online, better known as AOL. Then, in his middle school years his interest in video games led him to create some computer games of his own. While attending high school he was able to work for Mozilla, based in California. He also interned at Netscape Communications Corporation at the age of 16 and then attended Stanford beginning in 2003.
Ross took note of his mother’s frequent complaints about the internet browser she was using, Internet Explorer. While he was an intern at Netscape, who is most well known for its web browser, he became disenchanted with the browser he was working on. He envisioned a new browser that was smaller and easier to use. Thus, he decided to work toward making his vision a reality by creating Firefox. His project was open source and it quickly gained momentum. Mozilla devoted nearly all their resources to furthering the Firefox project. When Firefox officially released in November 2004, Ross was 19. In less than a year Firefox grabbed a large part of the market share from Internet Explorer with over 100 million downloads.
Blake Ross’s story is a great entrepreneurial example because he solved a problem through innovative and creative thinking. He identified a problem within the web browser industry and he decided to do something about it.
This is really an awesome story! Firefox is a very popular web browser today and I had no idea that it was created by a young kid with his unique story. Its also pretty cool that his idea was inspired by his mother’s complaints about internet explorer. This really shows that no matter how big the problem around us is, there is always a solution.
This is amazing! I personally use to use Firefox and it was always so fast! This man is an inspiration in the way that you can do anything if you put your mind to it!