Former MSN exec joins Mozilla China

Li Gong, the former top executive for MSN in China, has joined Mozilla's Chinese subsidiary, Mozilla Online, as its chairman and CEO.

Gong officially assumed his current position in April. Prior to that, Gong was the co-chair of the nonprofit Mozilla China organization started in March 2005 to promote and develop Mozilla products in China.

Li Gong

"The new company shares the same vision of the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corp., with its goals being increasing adoption of the Firefox browser in China, building local communities, developing local partnerships, and participating in and helping to advance the state of art of open source software in China," Gong said in an e-mail.

Gong left his position with Microsoft in January, saying at the time that he planned to return home to Beijing, but declining to elaborate any further. Prior to that, Gong was the chief architect of Java security at Sun Microsystems and the general manager of Sun's software organization in China.

Gong is now back in Beijing and beginning to hire new people for the Mozilla Online offices, which happen to be located in the Tsinghua Science Park. According to Gong, that is the same complex that houses his former MSN office, as well as offices for Google, Sun and Adobe.