YouTube CEO CUTs LONGTIME TIES with GOOGLE as she retires

A longtime Google executive, Susan Wojcicki is stepping down as YouTube’s CEO, after nine years of running the video site.

Susan played a key role in the company’s creation, which has reshaped entertainment, culture and politics, according to AP.

The announcement of her departure was contained in an email to YouTube employees that was shared publicly on Thursday.

The 54-year-old Susan said she is leaving to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about.” She didn’t elaborate on her plans.

Neal Mohan, who has worked closely with Wojcicki for years, will replace her as YouTube’s CEO.

She became one of the most respected female executives in the male-dominated tech industry, and will also be remembered as Google’s first landlord.

Shortly after Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporated their search engine into a business in 1998, Wojcicki rented the garage of her Menlo Park, California, home to them for $1,700 a month.

The report added further that 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 and later persuaded their former landlord to come work for their company.

“It would be one of the best decisions of my life,” Wojcicki wrote in the announcement of her departure.

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

According to the report; Wojcicki is also leaving just days before the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a case threatening the freewheeling style that has long been one of YouTube’s biggest advantages.

The case stems from the 2015 death of an American woman killed in Paris during an attack by Islamic State in an incident that spurred the victim’s family to file a lawsuit alleging YouTube’s algorithms aided the terror group’s recruitment. If the court decides that tech companies can be held liable for material posted on their sites, experts say the effects could not only destroy YouTube but shake up the entire internet.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.