Susan Wojcicki is stepping down as CEO of YouTube with immediate effect after nine years. She has named her Neal Mohan, who has been the company’s chief product officer for the past seven years, as her successor.
“I have decided to step away from my role as head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects that I am passionate about.(opens in new tab) Wojcicki will now act as an advisor to Google and Alphabet.
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In the post, Wojcicki credits Mohan for launching the hugely successful YouTube TV and leading YouTube Music, Premium and Shorts. She also says Mohan leads her Trust and Safety team at the company, and this team will become even more important as what she calls “the promise of AI” becomes a potential growth area.
During Wojcicki’s tenure, YouTube’s days of enduring public scrutiny over its handling of hate speech, content moderation, and misinformation are over. When she joined the platform in 2014, the number of users had just surpassed her billion, and “YouTubers” were still considered oddities. YouTube now has her 2.5 billion users worldwide and the YouTube creator is building a full-fledged career with her channel.
A friend of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Wojcicki was one of Google’s earliest employees and, in her own words, “managed marketing, co-created Google Image Search, He led Google’s first video and book search, creator of AdSense, worked on the acquisitions of YouTube and DoubleClick, and served as senior vice president of advertising,” he said before heading YouTube.
