YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced Thursday her decision to step down as CEO of the Alphabet video platform she had held for nine years. "Today, after nearly 25 years here, I have decided to step back from my role as the director of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects that I am passionate about," Wojcicki, 54, said.
Wojcicki herself announced that Neal Mohan will take over as YouTube CEO, adding that, in the short term, she will lend her support to her successor and help with the transition, including working with some YouTube teams, training team members and meet with creators.
During his tenure, YouTube TV, Premium and Shorts were launched, attracting a new generation of creators, and the development of new policies on hateful content and fake news.
In any case, you will not be completely separated from the group. In the longer term, the executive has indicated that she has reached an agreement with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai to assume an advisory role at Google and its parent. "This will allow me to draw on my different experiences over the years to offer advice and guidance at Google and the Alphabet portfolio of companies," she stressed.
Wojcicki's name was always first in the pools for who could succeed Pichai. Now it seems unlikely.
The history that unites the directive with the technological giant is curious. Wojcicki was Google's first landlady. Shortly after Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin turned their search engine into a business in 1998, Wojcicki rented the garage at her Menlo Park, California, home to them for $1,700 a month.
Page and Brin, both 25 at the time, continued to refine their search engine in Wojcicki's garage for five months before moving Google into a more formal office. Then they persuaded her to work for her company. “It would be one of the best decisions of my life,” Wojcicki wrote in her departure announcement.
In 2006 Google bought Wojcicki's house to serve as a monument to the origins of a company now valued at $1.2 trillion.
