Wojcicki will be replaced by insider Neal Mohan. The changing of the guard comes as YouTube vies for watch time with popular short-form video app TikTok and streaming services like Netflix.
One of tech’s top women, Wojcicki, 54, said she would focus on “family, healthcare and personal projects.”
Wojcicki announced his departure in a memo to YouTube staff, reportedly. “The time is right for me and I feel empowered because we have an incredible leadership team at YouTube,” Wojcicki wrote. She previously served as senior vice president of advertising products at Google and became CEO of YouTube in 2014.
Announcing that Mohan would step into her shoes, she wrote, “When I joined YouTube nine years ago, one of my first priorities was to bring in an incredible leadership team. Neal Mohan was one of those leaders, and will be the SVP and New Head of YouTube I’ve spent nearly 15 years of my career working with Neal, first when he moved to Google with the DoubleClick acquisition in 2007 and as his role grew to become SVP of display and video ads. He became the YouTube Chief Product Officer in 2015.
“Since then, he has built a world-class product and UX team, played pivotal roles in the launch of some of our biggest products, including YouTube TV, YouTube Music, Premium and Shorts, and led our Trust team and Safety, to ensure that YouTube lives up to its responsibilities as a global platform.”
Concluding his announcement, he noted that Mohan has “a wonderful sense for our product, our business, our creator and user communities, and our employees. Neal will be an outstanding leader for YouTube.”
Mohan, a Stanford graduate, joined Google in 2008 and is chief product officer of YouTube, where he focused on building YouTube Shorts and music.
Mohan has also worked with Microsoft and serves on the board of directors of Stitch Fix and the genomics and biotechnology company 23andMe.
Shares of Alphabet were barely changed for the day, down less than 1% on the news.
