Important moves at YouTube. Susan Wojcicki, CEO of the company, has announced that she is leaving the platform after almost 25 years on it (at Google, to be exact), where she has spent the last 9 years as its top manager.
Wojcicki herself announced the news early this morning to all YouTube employees, who received an email with this information. Behind Wojcicki’s departure is not a change of company or similar, but simply “to start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects that I am passionate about”.
Wojcicki’s story goes back to 1998, when he rented a garage from Sergy Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google. He started at the company in 1999, just as the search engine was beginning to be created. Likewise, she supported the purchase of YouTube in 2006, where she ended up being the CEO in 2014 until today. “Susan has a unique place in Google’s history and has made incredible contributions to products used by millions of people around the world,” commented Page and Brin. “We are so grateful for everything she has done over these past nearly 25 years…”.
And now who?
Unsurprisingly, the CEO position is not going to be left uncovered. Neal Mohan, currently CPO of the video division, will take the reins as CEO. After serving as a senior vice president at Google for many years, Mohan joined YouTube in 2015, where he has been one of Wojcicki’s first swords and confidants. In other words: he knows the idiosyncrasies of the company well and is made for it.
It should be noted that Susan will be providing support to Mohan over the next few months, in order to make the transition as smooth as possible. The idea is that the change is correct and not abrupt, so that the current trend, where content creators are the main focus of the platform (and where revenue is really generated thanks to advertising), is maintained.
