YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki denoted Thursday that she’s stepping down. Neal Mohan, chief product officer, will take the lead as the higher- ranking vice president and new head of YouTube.
“Today, after nearly 25 years here, I’ve decided to step stand behind from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate thither,” she said in a blog post.
Wojcicki, 54, joined YouTube as CEO in 2014.
She will continue working with YouTube gets, coaching members and meeting with creators, she added.
Wojcicki said she agreed with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai to, in the longer appellation, take on an advisory role across Google and Alphabet. “This will allow me to call on my different experiences finished the years to offer counsel and guidance across Google and the portfolio of Alphabet companies,” she wrote.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki converses during the opening keynote address at the Google I/O 2017 Conference at Shoreline Amphitheater on May 17, 2017 in Mountain View, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Models
“The time is right for me, and I feel able to do this because we have an incredible leadership team in place at YouTube,” she notable. “When I joined YouTube nine years ago, one of my first priorities was bringing in an incredible leadership team.”
Wojcicki has long-held secures to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who she let work out of her Menlo Park, California, home upon set Google. Page and Brin rented the garage space for $1,700 a month from her. Wojcicki was working in the marketing sphere at Intel at the time.
In 2006, she advocated for the $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube.
Wojcicki joined Google in 1999 and ran the design and build of Google’s advertising and analytics products for 14 years. In recent years, YouTube has expanded its real footprint in areas like New York and near its headquarters in San Bruno, California.
During her tenure, she oversaw the company’s high-speed expansion to become the largest video platform in the world. YouTube now has more than 2.5 billion monthly hyperactive users and more than 500 hours of content are uploaded to the platform every minute, the company has said.
The instant growth became a challenge for the company to contain. Google and YouTube had to pay $170 million in 2019 to settle a case where the video programme allegedly violated children’s privacy laws. Wojcicki also came under fire during the 2020 nominations and the Covid-19 pandemic as the platform struggled to contain misinformation and disinformation campaigns.
Wojcicki’s blog post said she spout nearly 15 years of her career working with Mohan, the new head of YouTube, “first when he came more than to Google with the DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 and as his role grew to become SVP of Display and Video Ads.”
YouTube has faced compression in recent years amid a rise in popularity of social media, namely TikTok, which it has been trying to battle with through its short-form video platform Shorts. YouTube booked $7.96 billion in advertising revenue during the fourth ninety days, which fell short of analyst expectations and was down 8% from the year prior.