Who is Neal Mohan - the Indian American to helm YouTube

Neal Mohan, a long time Indian American YouTube executive, is taking over as the CEO of the Google-owned video sharing platform. He is replacing Susan Wojcicki who has a long history with Google (now Alphabet), having rented garage space in her parent's house to co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin to start the company in 1998. She joined the search giant as its 16th employee a year later. 

With this new appointment, Mohan joins the elite list of Indian origin Global CEOs such as Google parent Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, IBM's Arvind Krishna, and Adobe's Shantanu Narayen, among others. 

The 49-year-old Neal Mohan holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He joined Google in 2008 and is the chief product officer at YouTube, involved with YouTube Shorts and Music.   

Most recently, he served as YouTube's chief product officer, responsible for the platform's products, user experience, and trust and safety initiatives. 

Mohan started his career at Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) in 1996 and then joined a startup called NetGravity that was later acquired by Internet advertising firm DoubleClick in 2002.  After his two-year MBA course and a brief stint at Microsoft, Mohan rejoined DoubleClick and played a key role in the company's $3.1-billion sale to Google in April 2007. 

At Google, Mohan led the firm's display and video advertising business, wherein he was responsible for its advertising product offerings on YouTube, the Google Display Network, AdSense, AdMob, and the DoubleClick ad tech products, from 2008 to 2015. He also built solutions for advertisers and media partners that enabled the growth of the consumer internet, mobile app ecosystem and online media industry. Under him, Google's ad business became one of its largest and fastest growing undertakings. 

Mohan has led several strategic startup acquisitions including Invite Media, Admeld, and Teracent to bolster Google's advertising offerings. 

In 2014, after Susan Wojcicki took over as YouTube CEO. and the next year Mohan too joined YouTube and since them has served as YouTube's chief product officer. Mohan has played a role in overseeing and launching some of YouTube’s biggest products including its subscription service YouTube Red which was later rebranded as YouTube Premium. He also played a key role in launching music streaming service YouTube Music, kids-oriented app YouTube Kids, live television streaming service YouTube TV and its short-form video service YouTube Shorts.  

In addition, Mohan leads YouTube's trust and safety team that oversees the creation and enforcement of platform policies and community guidelines governing the content available on the platform. 

“The best analogy that comes to mind for me is really just thinking about YouTube as a stage,” he told Fast Company in an interview in February 2021. Viewers need “the best views possible of the creators that they’re most excited about.” 

In her farewell note on February 16, Wojcicki described Mohan as “a terrific leader” who understands the YouTube community and what users need now and in the future. 

“I remain convinced today, just as I was when I started nine years ago, that YouTube's best days are ahead of it," she added. "And with Neal and our incredible team of employees, you will all be in good hands”. 

Over the years, several companies, including file hosting company Dropbox, have unsuccessfully tried to hire him to lead their product function. The most prominent one being Twitter's offer in 2011 which Mohan declined. Thereafter, he stayed back after Google offered $100 million in stock grants to retain him, TechCrunch reported. 

Mohan also sits on the board of Stitch Fix, a personal styling company, and the genomics and biotechnology firm 23andMe. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent US think tank.