After nine years in the position, Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, is retiring.
She declared on her blog that she had "decided to start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I'm passionate about. ".
Neal Mohan, the platform's chief product officer, will succeed Susan Wojcicki as CEO of the Google-owned video website.
We have a fantastic leadership team in place at YouTube, so I feel able to do this, Ms. Wojcicki said, adding that the time is right for her.
In the "short term," Ms. Wojcicki continued, she would work at YouTube to "support Neal and help with the transition.". ".
She gave Mr. Mohan credit for starting YouTube TV and for overseeing YouTube Music, Premium, and Shorts in her blog.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, the company that owns Google, invited Ms. Wojcicki, and she responded that she would "take on an advisory role across Google and Alphabet.". ".
This will enable me to draw on my varied experiences from the past to provide advice and direction to Google and the portfolio of Alphabet companies, she said.
When Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded the company in 1998 in the garage of Ms. Wojcicki's home in Silicon Valley, she got involved and a year later joined the company as its first marketing manager.
She has worked for Google for almost 25 years and was listed as number 16 among the first 20 employees of the tech giant.
In the course of her time at YouTube, Ms. Wojcicki has come under fire from the general public for the way the site handles content moderation, the dissemination of false information, and ongoing privacy concerns regarding children.
The spread of false information on YouTube, according to fact-checking organizations around the world, is not being curbed enough.
The online video platform had just passed the one billion user mark when she joined in 2014. There are currently 2.5 billion users using it worldwide, and many YouTube creators, also known as YouTubers, have made successful careers out of their individual channels.
The highest-paid content creator on YouTube in 2017 was Jimmy Donaldson, also known as Mr Beast.
In 2022, the young American made £45 million ($54 million), more than any other YouTube creator in the platform's history, according to recent estimates from Forbes magazine.
Ms. Wojcicki is the newest high-profile tech executive to resign from long-standing positions.
Sheryl Sandberg left Facebook in 2022, Jeff Bezos left Amazon in 2021, and Twitter's CEO Parag Agrawal left the company last year as part of a reorganization led by Elon Musk, the new company's CEO.
Adhere to Shiona McCallum. @shionamc on Twitter.
