Susan Wojcicki, the head of YouTube, announced on Thursday that she was stepping down from her post after running the world’s most popular online video platform for nearly a decade. She will stay on as a consultant at technology giant Google, YouTube’s parent company, which she joined when it was still a start-up in her garage.
“Today, after nearly 25 years here, I’ve decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about,” Ms. Wojcicki wrote in a letter to employees of the California-based group that was published on YouTube’s official blog.
Neal Mohan, the company's chief product officer, will take over as CEO later this year.
Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page rented her garage in 1998, the company’s first headquarters after their dorm room at nearby Stanford University. A year later, she became the fledgling company’s first marketing director.
Google going through a rough patch
An iconic Silicon Valley woman, Susan Wojcicki is classified as the 16th employee of Google, which became Alphabet in 2015 to distinguish the group’s search engine and main services from its other lesser-known businesses, its “bets”.
“I’ve worn many hats,” she recalled in her note, posted on the YouTube blog - from co-creating the Google image search engine, to acquiring YouTube and DoubleClick, and her role as vice president of advertising.
Google largely dominates the global digital advertising market, but is currently going through a rough patch, as are many of its rivals, because of inflation that has led advertisers to cut back.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, the group disappointed with exceptionally low ad revenues year-on-year: $59 billion for Google (-3.6%) and less than $8 billion for YouTube (-7.8%).
At the helm of the service, Ms. Wojcicki has dealt with a number of controversies, from privacy risks for the site’s underage users to combating misinformation, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.
