Susan Wojcicki, Googler No. 16 and YouTube CEO for a long time, is resigning

Today, YouTube is going through a lot of changes because longtime CEO Susan Wojcicki is leaving Google. “A personal update from Susan” on the YouTube Blog informs viewers that Susan will be retiring to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about.” Neal Mohan, one of Wojcicki’s longtime lieutenants who has worked at Google for 15 years, will take over as YouTube’s new leader.

Wojcicki is officially employee No. 16 at Google. She famously rented her parents’ garage to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin a year before she was hired, where they established their first office. Wojcicki has worked for Google for 25 years—basically, throughout its entire history—and joined the company when it had no revenue. In 1999, she took on the role of Google’s first marketing manager, and in 2003, she became the first product manager for Google AdSense. Wojcicki is credited with coming up with the idea to buy YouTube in 2006. He also managed to get DoubleClick for $3.1 billion the following year. She was the CEO of the largest video website in the world by 2014.

Wojcicki took control of YouTube when it was already well-known, the third most popular website in the world after Facebook and Google, and the de facto video site on the internet. She was in charge of a significant expansion of the service as a result of YouTube’s shift to multiple vertical content apps beginning in 2015. These apps included YouTube Premium, in-house “YouTube Originals” content, YouTube Music, YouTube Gaming, and YouTube Kids, all of which were free of ads. YouTube TV, a replacement for cable television, went live in 2017, YouTube Stories, a Snapchat-like app, in 2018, and YouTube Shorts, a TikTok-like app, in 2021. With a huge $2 billion-a-year deal for NFL Sunday Ticket last year, YouTube established itself as a major player in the sports industry. Today, the brand is essentially Google’s content division, and we anticipate that “YouTube Podcasts” will be the next app.

YouTube Originals, YouTube Gaming, and YouTube Stores are all dead as a result of Wojcicki’s massive wave of product launches. Although the decision to eliminate the dislike counter in 2021 appears to be a particularly contentious one, YouTube has ever made a change that was unpopular with the user base. The site’s content moderation policies are frequently misinterpreted and difficult to understand, leaving creators with few options for resolving issues.

YouTube is getting ready for one of its biggest battles when Wojcicki leaves. The TikTok app from China threatens YouTube’s video dominance for the first time in a long time. Teenagers aged 4 to 18 are said to spend more time on TikTok than on YouTube, indicating the site’s extreme popularity among young people. With its short videos and addictive swipe interface for smartphones, TikTok started out as an even smaller version of YouTube. The service quickly added 10-minute video limits as it gained popularity, and the desktop website now looks almost exactly like YouTube. If TikTok doesn’t get banned by the US government first, there won’t be much of a difference between the two core video offerings once the video run times are uncapped.

Wojcicki has stated that she has “agreed with Sundar to take on an advisory role across Google and Alphabet,” despite the fact that she will eventually not have a day-to-day position at Google. Wojcicki will remain at the company for “the short term” in order to assist with the transition.