Susan Wojcicki, the chief executive of YouTube and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent women, said Thursday she was leaving her former role as head of the Internet’s most popular video service.
Ms Wojcicki’s departure spells the end of the pioneering early days of YouTube and its parent company Google, and she joins a growing list of women who have left top positions at big Silicon Valley companies in recent years. .
Google spent some of its early days in Wojcicki’s garage. A personal friend of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, she became one of the company’s first employees and rose through the ranks of executive positions over the past two decades. After Google acquired YouTube, Ms. Wojcicki, 54, helped grow the video platform into one of the world’s largest social media companies.
“Today, after almost 25 years here, I have decided to step back from my role as YouTube Director and start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects that I am passionate about,” Ms. Wojcicki wrote in a letter to employeeswhich was posted on the official YouTube blog.
Neal Mohan, the company’s chief product officer, will assume the role of chief executive officer.
In a joint statement, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin said: “Susan occupies a unique place in the history of Google and has made the most incredible contribution to the products used by people everywhere. We are so grateful for all that she has done in the last 25 years.”
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Andrea Faville, a YouTube spokeswoman, declined to comment on Ms Wojcicki’s health. But in recent months, Ms Wojcicki appeared to cut back on public appearances, such as missing a “Made on YouTube” event in September.
Ms. Wojcicki will remain as a consultant at Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s chief executive, asked him to advise the company’s portfolio companies at a time when artificial intelligence was poised to transform many of its products.
“Susan played a key role in Google’s origin story, and over the years her leadership has opened entirely new chapters for the company,” Pichai said in a statement. He added that there were “exciting opportunities” ahead for the platform.
Ms Wojcicki’s departure from YouTube’s top job further thins the ranks of women running big tech companies. Sheryl Sandberg, who was director of operations at Meta, left her position last year. Meg Whitman, who led Hewlett-Packard and one of its successor companies; IBM’s Ginni Rometty; and Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer have also left senior roles in recent years. While Safra Catz remains CEO of Oracle, a maker of commercial software, Jayshree Ullal runs Arista Networks, and Lisa Su leads chipmaker AMD, the industry has lost a host of barrier-breaking women leaders, with no obvious successors to them. the view.
Despite tech companies emphasizing the need for more diverse leadership in recent years, the gender gap stretches from large companies to small ones. More than half of US start-ups lacked women in leadership in 2020, according to a report from Silicon Valley Bank.
Mr. Mohan came to Google from DoubleClick, an ad technology company acquired by Google in 2007, eventually rising to Senior Vice President of Image and Video Ads. He became YouTube’s chief product officer in 2015 and oversaw trust and safety efforts and major product launches, including YouTube Music and Shorts, Ms. Wojcicki wrote in her note Thursday.
Mr. Mohan inherits YouTube during a period of challenges. The company is dealing with a slowdown in digital advertising that has halted its growth, and faces increasing competition from TikTok, a Chinese-owned short video service.
YouTube added its own short video feature, Shorts, to compete with TikTok, and has tried to become a destination for more premium content by offering cable TV shows and NFL Sunday Ticket, a package of weekly football games. Mr Pichai said this month that Shorts was now averaging 50 billion views daily. The service has also started running ads and sharing revenue with creators on the platform, an effort to drive influencers away from TikTok.
YouTube has recently lost several prominent executives, including Robert Kyncl, who was chief commercial officer before leaving earlier this year to become chief executive of Warner Music Group, and Martin Kon, YouTube’s commercial chief financial officer who left to start the company. AI. up Cohere.
Most of YouTube’s revenue comes from ads that run before, during, and alongside videos. In the third quarter, the company’s ad sales were down 1.9 percent from a year earlier. Last quarter, revenue fell 8 percent to $7.96 billion.
The platform has always been interested in diversifying its business and has prioritized efforts to expand its content subscriptions. YouTube said in November that it had 80 million paying subscribers for its premium music and services, a jump of 30 million from the previous year.
The platform also offers YouTube TV, a package of streaming television channels to replace cable packages. YouTube TV has more than five million subscribers, the company said. YouTube does not disclose the revenue it generates from subscriptions.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.