Mozilla was the mascot

Mascot

The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...

 of the now disbanded Netscape Communications Corporation.

Mozilla takes the form of a green and purple cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

 lizard

Lizard

Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with nearly 3800 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica as well as most oceanic island chains...

. Programmer Jamie Zawinski

Jamie Zawinski

Jamie Zawinski , commonly known as jwz, is a former professional American computer programmer responsible for significant contributions to the free software projects Mozilla and XEmacs, and early versions of the Netscape Navigator web browser...

 came up with the name during a meeting while working at the company. Mozilla was designed by Dave Titus in 1994.

The name "Mozilla" was already in use at Netscape as the codename for Netscape Navigator

Netscape Navigator

Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser that was popular in the 1990s. It was the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared...

 1.0. The term came from a combination of "Mosaic killer" (as Netscape wanted to displace NCSA Mosaic

Mosaic (web browser)

Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened...

 as the world's number one 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...

) and Godzilla

Godzilla

is a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...

. Initially, the mascot took various forms, including that of a helmeted astronaut

Astronaut

An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....

 or 'spaceman', but the eventual choice of a Godzilla-like lizard was no doubt thought to go well with the Godzilla-like name.

Mozilla featured prominently on Netscape's web site in the company's early years. However, the need to project a more 'professional' image (especially towards corporate clients) led to his being removed. Mozilla continued to be used inside Netscape, though, often featuring on T-shirt

T-shirt

A T-shirt is a style of shirt. A T-shirt is buttonless and collarless, with short sleeves and frequently a round neck line....

s given to staff or on artwork adorning the walls of the Netscape campus in Mountain View

Mountain View, California

-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...

.
The name "Mozilla" later became more prominent when it was used for the open source browser

Mozilla Application Suite

The Mozilla Application Suite is a cross-platform integrated Internet suite. Its development was initiated by Netscape Communications Corporation, before their acquisition by AOL. It is based on the source code of Netscape Communicator...

 of the same name. With the launch of the mozilla.org web site in 1998, the mascot was redesigned as a larger, fiercer red Tyrannosaurus rex

Tyrannosaurus

Tyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...

. The new design was by Shepard Fairey

Shepard Fairey

Frank Shepard Fairey is an American contemporary graphic designer, and illustrator who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "André the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign, in which he appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News. His...

 of "Obey Giant"

André the Giant Has a Posse

Andre the Giant Has a Posse is a street art and viral marketing campaign based on a design by Shepard Fairey created in 1989 in Providence, Rhode Island. Distributed by the skater community, the stickers featuring an image of André the Giant began showing up in many cities across the U.S.A...

 and Barack Obama "Hope" poster

Barack Obama "Hope" poster

The Barack Obama "Hope" poster is an image of Barack Obama designed by artist Shepard Fairey, which was widely described as iconic and became synonymous with the 2008 Obama presidential campaign...

 fame.

When Netscape acquired the website directory NewHoo in 1998, they rebranded it the Open Directory Project

Open Directory Project

The Open Directory Project , also known as Dmoz , is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links. It is owned by Netscape but it is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors.ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings...

 with the nickname "dmoz" (Directory of Mozilla) due to its similarity to the Mozilla project. An image of Mozilla was placed on every page of the site, which remains the case today, despite Netscape's disbanding after its acquisition by AOL

AOL

AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...

.

External links

• The birth of the name Mozilla
• The Mozilla Museum - lots of pictures of Mozilla
• Mozilla teeshirt art
• Dave Titus - creator of Mozilla