Blake Aaron Ross is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 software developer

Software developer

A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process. Their work includes researching, designing, developing, and testing software. A software developer may take part in design, computer programming, or software project management...

 who is known for his work on the Mozilla

Mozilla

Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....

 web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

; in particular, he started the Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...

 project with Dave Hyatt

Dave Hyatt

Dave Hyatt is an American software developer currently employed by Apple Inc. , where he is part of the development team responsible for the Safari web browser and WebKit framework. Hyatt was part of the original team that shipped the beta releases and 1.0 release of Safari...

, as well as the Spread Firefox project with Asa Dotzler

Asa Dotzler

Asa Dotzler is an American software developer best known for his work as community coordinator for several Mozilla projects. He was founder of Mozilla's Quality Assurance and Testing Program, which grew under his leadership from just a few contributors when Dotzler joined the project to tens of...

 while working as a contractor at the Mozilla Foundation

Mozilla Foundation

The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls trademarks and other intellectual property...

. In 2005, he was nominated for Wired magazine's top Rave Award, Renegade of the Year, opposite Larry Page, Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....

 and Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian...

. He was also a part of Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

magazine's 2005 hot list.. He currently works for Facebook

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...

 as Director of Product.
Born in Miami, Florida

Miami, Florida

Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...

, Ross created his first website at the age of 10.
He began programming while still in middle school and began contributing to Netscape

Netscape

Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...

 very soon after it was open-sourced.