Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, steps downas announced in email sent to employees.
Wojcicki has been at Google for nearly 25 years, but will return to “starting a new chapter focused on my family, my health and the personal projects I am passionate about”.
Neal Mohan, YouTube’s current head of product, will take over the leadership of the video streaming service. According to Wojcicki, Mohan played “Critical Papers” in the development of several YouTube products, including YouTube TV, YouTube Music, Premium and Shorts, and also led the company’s trust and safety team.
In the short term, Wojcicki will help Mohan with the transition. In the long term, it will play a “Advisory role on Google and Alphabet”.
Here is Wojcicki’s full letter to YouTube employees:
Hi YouTubers,
Twenty-five years ago, I made the decision to join two Stanford graduate students who were building a new search engine. Their names were Larry and Sergey. I saw the potential of what they were building, which was incredibly exciting, and even though the company had few users and no revenue, I decided to join the team.
It would be one of the best decisions of my life.
Over the years, I’ve worn many hats and done many things: managed marketing, co-founded Google Image Search, led Google’s first video and book search as well as the early stages of building AdSense, worked on YouTube and DoubleClick Acquisitions, I was SVP of Ads and, for the last nine years, CEO of YouTube. I accepted every challenge that came my way because I had a mission that benefited the lives of many people around the world: finding information, telling stories and supporting creators, artists and small businesses. I am very proud of everything we have achieved. It has been stimulating, meaningful and absorbing.
Today, after almost 25 years here, I decided to leave my role as director of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, my health and the personal projects I am passionate about.
This is the right time for me and I feel empowered to do this because we have an incredible leadership team at YouTube. When I joined YouTube nine years ago, one of my first priorities was to bring in an amazing leadership team. Neal Mohan was one of those leaders and will become the senior vice president and new director of YouTube. I’ve spent nearly 15 years of my career working with Neal, first when he joined Google with the DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 and then, as his role grew, to become SVP of Image and Video Ads. In 2015, he became YouTube’s Chief Product Officer. Since then, he has built a world-class product and UX team, played a key role in launching some of our biggest products including YouTube TV, YouTube Music and Premium and Shorts, and has led our trust and confidence ensuring that YouTube lives up to its responsibility as a global platform. He knows our product, our business, our creator and user communities, and our employees very well. Neal will be a great leader for YouTube.
With everything we’re doing through Shorts, streaming and subscriptions, along with the promise of AI, YouTube’s most exciting opportunities lie ahead, and Neal is the right person to lead us.
To all the YouTubers I’ve had the privilege of working with, you’ve done so much to make this platform better over the years. You’ve created the greatest creative economy the world has ever seen, enabled entirely new forms of art and storytelling, and helped millions of creators and artists reach new audiences, while investing in responsible growth so that this brilliant community of creators, artists , viewers and advertisers not only coexist, but thrive together. Thank you all.
As for me, in the short term, I plan to support Neal and help with the transition, which will include continuing to work with some of the YouTube teams, training team members, and meeting with content creators. Longer term, I agreed with Sundar to take on an advisory role at Google and Alphabet. This will allow me to leverage my different experiences over the years to offer advice and guidance across Google and Alphabet’s portfolio of companies. This is an extremely important moment for Google, it reminds me of the early days: incredible product and technological innovation, tremendous opportunity and a healthy disregard for the impossible.
Plus, I’ll still be around, so I’ll have a chance to thank the thousands of people across the company and around the world that I’ve worked and learned from. But for now, I want to thank Sundar for his leadership, support and vision over the years. I also want to thank Larry and Sergey for inviting me on what truly was the adventure of a lifetime. I always dreamed of working for a company with a mission that could change the world for the better. Thanks to you and your vision, I had the opportunity to live that dream. It has been an absolute privilege to be a part of this and I’m excited for what’s to come.
Thank you for everything,
