After nine years as YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki is stepping down from her role.
Key Details
- Wojcicki announced her departure on Thursday morning in a letter to employees.
- In her announcement, Wojcicki shares that she would be stepping down to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about.”
- Wojcicki has worked at Google, now called Alphabet, for almost 25 years and served as YouTube CEO for nine years.
- YouTube’s chief product officer Neal Mohan will be replacing Wojcicki, who will stay on to help Mohan transition into leadership.
Why it’s news
Since joining Google in 1999, Wojcicki has seen tremendous growth within the company. She rented her garage space to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and later joined the company.
After taking over as YouTube CEO in 2014, she started the YouTube partners program that allowed the video-sharing platform to capitalize on a growing content creator community.
In 2021, ad revenue from the program reached $28.8 billion. Last year, Wojcicki ranked 20th on Fortune’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women.
Wojcicki has also guided YouTube through struggles and controversy, including growing misinformation on the platform.
Wojcicki’s departure comes at a particularly precarious time for the video-sharing platform. Just last month, Google laid off nearly 12,000 employees. YouTube, in particular, is struggling against growing competition from the video-sharing social-media app TikTok. YouTube is struggling to maintain the attention of a younger demographic that prefers to watch short-form videos on TikTok, Forbes reports.
While YouTube has responded to the TikTok threat with its own short-form video format, YouTube Shorts, the threat of TikTok is still prominent.
Notable quotes
“Susan played a key role in Google’s origin story, and over the years her leadership opened up entirely new chapters for the company. Her vision and passion have helped YouTube grow into an incredible platform that empowers creators everywhere,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai says.