Why did Susan Wojcicki resign as YouTube CEO? Former tech chief's letter surfaces

The online community was in utter shock after YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki announced that she will be stepping down as the CEO of YouTube. On Thursday, the YouTube chief made the announcement by sending out a letter to all the youtube employees along with the YouTube community. After it was announced that Wojcicki is stepping down from the post she held for 9 long years, it was reported that her long-time lieutenant, Indian-American Neal Mohan will be replacing the YouTube Head. Mohan has been the Chief Product Officer of the social media video streaming site. 

“Today, after nearly 25 years here, I’ve decided to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I'm passionate about,” Wojcicki wrote in a letter on Thursday. “The time is right for me, and I feel able to do this because we have an incredible leadership team in place at YouTube. When I joined YouTube nine years ago, one of my first priorities was bringing in an incredible leadership team,” she added. The YouTube chief also had nice things to say about her successor and made it clear that the transition will be smooth. 

Today, after nearly 25 years at @Google, I’m stepping back to start a new chapter. I'm inspired every day by creators around the world who bring people together on @YouTube. It's been an honor to have a front row seat to this incredible community. https://t.co/063sYalPzX

— Susan Wojcicki (@SusanWojcicki) February 16, 2023

Her legacy as the YouTube CEO

Wojcicki was one of the earliest employees of the popular American search engine Google. She famously gave away her garage to Stanford graduates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who later came together to build the much-loved and extremely popular search engine, Google. Wojcicki recalled her early days in Google, in her Thursday letter.  “Twenty-five years ago I made the decision to join a couple of Stanford graduate students who were building a new search engine. Their names were Larry and Sergey. I saw the potential of what they were building, which was incredibly exciting, and although the company had only a few users and no revenue, I decided to join the team,” she wrote. Wojcicki then went on to call it the best decision of my life. 

The YouTube head watched the video-sharing platform for over a decade. Under her reign, YouTube became the world’s largest video-sharing platform and became one of the major sources of entertainment for billions of people. In a 2017 interview on the show “Recode Decode”, Wojcicki called the platform “an ecosystem between advertisers and creators and users”. It was under Wojicicki’s leadership that the company’s revenue skyrocketed last year. In the year 2022, YouTube generated a whopping $29.2 billion in ad sales, which was 10% of Alphabet’s total revenue. The video-sharing platform put out a statement on Thursday, thanking the YouTube chief for her 9 years of service. “Thank you @SusanWojcicki for all your amazing work over the years to make YouTube home for so many creators,” the social media video-sharing platform wrote on Twitter.

thank you @SusanWojcicki for all your amazing work over the years to make YouTube home for so many creators ♥️ pic.twitter.com/T2t2NUqRsW

— YouTube Creators (@YouTubeCreators) February 16, 2023