YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki steps down after 9 years

Susan Wojcicki, a longtime Google executive who played a key role in the company’s creation, is stepping down as CEO of YouTube after spending the past nine years running the video site that has reshaped entertainment, culture and politics.

In an email to YouTube employees made public Thursday, Wojcicki, 54, said she was stepping down to “start a new chapter focused on family, health, and a personal project that I’m passionate about.” He did not elaborate on his plans.

Neil Mohan, who has worked with Wojcicki for years, will replace him as CEO of YouTube.

Although she is one of the most respected female executives in the male-dominated tech industry, Wojcicki will also be remembered as Google’s first employer.

Shortly after Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporated the search engine into their business, Wojcicki rented a garage in their Menlo Park, California, home for $1,700 a month.

Page and Brin — both 25 at the time — continued refining the search engine in Wojcicki’s garage for five months before moving Google to a more formal office and then persuading their former landlord to work for the company. “This will be one of the best decisions of my life,” Wojcicki wrote in the announcement of his departure.

In 2006, Google bought Wojcicki’s house to serve as a monument to the roots of the company that is now worth $1.2 trillion. During Wojcicki’s career at Google, Brin became a sister-in-law when he married his sister, Anne, in 2007. Brin and Anne Wojcicki divorced in 2015.

YouTube is facing a challenging period

Wojcicki’s departure comes as YouTube faces one of its most challenging periods since Google bought the quirky video site that faced widespread complaints of copyright infringement in 2006 for a reported price of $1.65 billion (the all-stock deal was valued at $1.76 billion when the transaction closed).

Although Google was initially mocked for paying so much for a video service whose future seemed doubtful, it turned out to be a bargain. In addition to being a cultural phenomenon that attracts billions of viewers, YouTube has also been a financial success with total advertising revenue of $29 billion last year. That’s up from $8 billion in annual ad revenue in 2017 when Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., began announcing YouTube’s financial earnings.

But YouTube’s ad revenue in the last six months of last year fell five percent from a year earlier – the first full-scale downturn the video service has shown since Alphabet lifted the financial curtain. Analysts worry the slump will continue this year, one reason why Alphabet’s share price has fallen about 10 percent since the release of its latest quarterly report two weeks ago.

Wojcicki also left just days before the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a case that threatens the freewheeling style that has long been one of YouTube’s biggest gains.

The case stems from the 2015 death of an American woman who was killed in Paris when she was attacked by the Islamic State in an incident that prompted the victim’s family to file a lawsuit alleging YouTube algorithms aided the terror group’s recruitment. If the court decides that the technology company can be held responsible for the material posted on the site, experts say that the effect could not only damage YouTube but shake the entire internet.

This is because under US law, internet companies are generally not responsible for the material users post on their networks. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 – itself part of a broader telecommunications law – provides a legal “safe harbor” for internet companies – protections seized by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen as an opportunity to launch as a video site. to “broadcast itself.”