Susan Wojcicki, the current Head of YouTube, is resigning after nine years in the position.
She stated in a blog post that she had “decided to begin a new chapter centered on my family, health, and personal projects that I am enthusiastic about.”
Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief product officer, will assume leadership of the Google-owned video network.
“The time is right for me, and I feel able to do this because we have an amazing leadership team in place at YouTube,” Ms. Wojcicki said.
Ms. Wojcicki added that she would remain at YouTube in the “short term” to “support Neal and aid in the transfer.”
She lauded Mr. Mohan in her journal for launching YouTube TV and leading YouTube Music, Premium, and Shorts.
Ms. Wojcicki confirmed, at the invitation of Alphabet’s chief executive Sundar Pichai, that she would “take on an advisory position across Google and Alphabet.”
“This will enable me to utilize my varied experiences over the years to provide counsel and direction across Google and the Alphabet portfolio,” she said.
Legacy
When Google’s founders, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page, set up business in her garage in Silicon Valley in 1998, Ms. Wojcicki became the company’s first marketing manager the following year.
A Google employee for nearly 25 years, she was number 16 on the list of the company’s first twenty workers.
During Ms. Wojcicki’s tenure at YouTube, she has been criticized for the platform’s handling of content moderation, the spread of misinformation, and ongoing worries regarding kid privacy.
Global fact-checking organizations assert that YouTube is not doing enough to stop the spread of misinformation on its site.
In 2014, when she joined the online video network, it had just surpassed one billion users. It presently has 2.5 billion users globally, and many YouTube creators, also known as YouTubers, have carved out lucrative careers from their channels.
Jimmy Donaldson, also known as Mr. Beast, was YouTube’s highest-earning video creator in the previous year.
Forbes magazine believes that the young American earned £45 million in gross revenue in 2022, more than any YouTube creator in the platform’s history.
Ms. Wojcicki is the latest in a string of prominent tech leaders to leave their long-held positions.
Her departure follows Jeff Bezos, who quit as CEO of Amazon in 2021, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg stepping down in 2022, and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who left the company last year as part of a shake-up initiated by new boss Elon Musk.
