West News Wire: After nine years as the CEO of the social media network, Susan Wojcicki is leaving her position.
Wojcicki stated in a blog post on Thursday that she would now devote her time to “focusing on my family, health, and personal initiatives I’m passionate about.”
The new CEO will be Neal Mohan.
On Thursday, Wojcicki announced that she would assist with the CEO succession process but that, in the long run, she would serve as an advisor to Google and Alphabet.
Wojcicki described how she joined Google, the company that owns YouTube, earlier in her career when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, “a couple of Stanford graduate students,” were developing the search engine.
“I saw the potential of what they were building, which was incredibly exciting, and although the company had only a few users and no revenue, I decided to join the team,” she wrote. “It would be one of the best decisions of my life.”
Wojcicki went on to have various responsibilities, including managing marketing, co-creating Google Image Search, leading Google’s first Video and Book search, as well as early parts of AdSense’s creation, working on the YouTube and DoubleClick acquisitions, and serving as senior vice president of Ads. Google purchased YouTube in 2006.
Wojcicki said she’s worked with Mohan for nearly 15 years. He came over to Google during the DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 and later became senior vice president of Display and Video Ads. He became YouTube’s chief product officer in 2015.
“He has a wonderful sense for our product, our business, our creator and user communities, and our employees. Neal will be a terrific leader for YouTube,” Wojcicki said.
