Mozilla today announced that its board has appointed its current Chief Technology Officer, Brendan Eich, to the role of CEO, effective immediately. 

Eich was a Mozilla co-founder and was heavily involved in every aspect of Mozilla’s development starting from the original idea in 1998. 

According to a blog on the company’s website, Li Gong will be named Chief Operating Officer and a number of functions will move under his organization including Cloud Services, IT, Marketplace, Mobile & Research, and Platform Engineering.

In a blog post of his own, Eich said he was “honored and humbled” by the appointment. He thanks acting CEO Jay Sullivan for his services as an interim CEO while Mozilla searched for a chief executive over the past year. 

Sullivan will stay on through the transition to support the team and then leave to pursue new opportunities, according to Eich. 

Eich will be charged with directing Mozilla’s high-profile move into the mobile space with its Web-based Firefox OS. Mozilla has its sights set on bringing a $25 smartphone to market through its lightweight, HTML-5 operating system. 

“Mozilla speaks for the open Web, where consumers and developers alike can prosper and express themselves free from the constraints imposed by commercial, profit-driven technologies,” Eich wrote in a statement.