Susan Wojcicki to step down as YouTube CEO, to be replaced by Indian-American Neal Mohan

Google-owned online video platform YouTube's chief executive officer, Susan Wojcicki, and one of the most prominent women in technology, has announced that she will be stepping down from her role. In a letter addressed to YouTube employees, Wojcicki explained her reason for stepping down as CEO as she wanted to "focus on her family, health, and passion projects". 

She will be succeeded by Neal Mohan, who’s worked closely with Wojcicki for many years and has worked under her at YouTube since 2015. Mohan first joined Google in 2007 with the DoubleClick Acquisition and eventually rose to become Senior Vice President of Display and Video Ads. He eventually became YouTube’s Chief Product Officer in 2015 and has led YouTube’s Trust and Safety team. 

“The time is right for me, and I feel able to do this because we have an incredible leadership team in place at YouTube. When I joined YouTube nine years ago, one of my first priorities was bringing in an incredible leadership team,” she wrote.

Referring to Mohan, she said that he has "a wonderful sense for our product, our business, our creator and user communities, and our employees" and believes “he will be a terrific leader for YouTube”.  

Mohan will join a growing list of Indian-origin CEOs at the helm of US-based global giants, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. 

Wojcicki was the one who rented her garage to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to start the company and eventually became an employee of Google a year later becoming Google’s employee No. 16.  

Wojcicki joined Google when it had no revenue and has been at the company for 25 years—basically, from the very start. Her first role was Google's first marketing manager in 1999, and in 2003 she became Google AdSense's first product manager.  

Wojcicki is credited with the idea to buy YouTube in 2006 and managed that $1.65 billion acquisition as well as the $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick the next year. By 2014 she was CEO of the video site.

Wojcicki gained control of YouTube when it was already a household name, and the top three websites in the world after Google and Facebook. Starting in 2015, she expanded the service to multiple vertical content apps, which saw the launch of the ad-free YouTube Premium, in-house "YouTube Originals" content, YouTube Music, YouTube Gaming, and YouTube Kids.  

The cable TV replacement service YouTube TV launched in 2017, the Snapchat clone YouTube Stories launched in 2018, and the TikTok clone YouTube Shorts launched in 2021. Last year, YouTube set itself up to be a pillar of the sports world with a huge $2 billion-a-year deal for NFL Sunday Ticket.  

“Susan has a unique place in Google History and has made the most incredible contribution to products used by people everywhere […] We’re so grateful for all she’s done over the last 25 years,” Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Founders of Google) said in a statement. 

Wojcicki will be around for "the short term" to help with the transition. While she eventually won't have a day-to-day role at Google, Wojcicki mentioned in her blog that she will be supporting Mohan through the transition.  Over the long term, she “agreed with Sundar to take on an advisory role across Google and Alphabet” where she will offer guidance and counselling across Google’s businesses.