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Today, YouTube is undergoing big changes, with long-time CEO Susan Wojcicki stepping down and leaving Google. The YouTube blog features a “personal update from Susan” to “start a new chapter focused on family, health, and personal projects that I’m passionate about.” announced that she was resigning. YouTube’s new leader will be her Neal Mohan, one of her Wojcicki’s longtime lieutenants at Google, where she worked for 15 years.
Wojcicki, officially Google’s 16th employee, rented her parents’ garage to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to open her first office a year before she was hired. is famous. Wojcicki says she joined Google when she wasn’t profitable, and she’s been there for 25 years (that is, Google’s entire history). Her first roles were in 1999 she was Google’s first marketing manager and in 2003 she became Google AdSense’s first product manager. Wojcicki said she had the idea to buy YouTube in 2006, which she managed her $1.65 billion acquisition, and the following year she managed her $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick. bottom. By 2014, she became her CEO of the world’s largest video site.
Wojcicki took control when YouTube, the web’s de facto video site and the third largest site in the world after Google and Facebook, was already a household name. She has overseen the dramatic expansion of the service to multiple vertical content her apps through her YouTube pivot since 2015, ad-free YouTube Premium, in-house “YouTube Originals” content, YouTube Music, Launched YouTube Gaming and YouTube Kids. YouTube TV, her TV replacement service launched in 2017, YouTube Stories, a Snapchat clone launched in 2018, and YouTube Shorts, a TikTok clone launched in 2021. A $1 billion annual contract for the NFL Sunday Ticket. Now the brand is basically Google’s content division, and everyone expects her next YouTube app to be “YouTube Podcasts.”
Wojcicki’s huge wave of product launches hasn’t all been a success. YouTube Originals, YouTube Gaming and YouTube Store are all dead. I don’t think YouTube has ever made any uncontroversial changes to its user base, but the decision to remove the dislike counter in 2021 seems particularly painful. It’s frequently mis-enforced, confusing, and authors have little recourse to address the issue.
Wojcicki is leaving YouTube and gearing up for one of his biggest battles. For the first time in a long time, YouTube’s video dominance is threatened by someone. That’s his TikTok app in China. The site is hugely popular with young people, with ages 4 to 18 reportedly spending more time on his TikTok than on YouTube. TikTok started as a more bite-sized version of YouTube. It features short videos and an addictive smartphone swipe interface. After gaining traction, the service quickly expanded to a 10-minute video limit, making today’s desktop websites look like almost exact copies of YouTube. and once it does, there isn’t much difference between the two major video services, assuming TikTok isn’t banned by the US government first.
Wojcicki will stay “for a short time” to help with the transition, and will eventually not have a day-to-day role at Google, although Wojcicki said, “Sundar will continue to work with Google and Alphabet.”
