YouTube Chief Executive Officer Susan Wojcicki will be stepping down after nine years at the helm of the world’s largest online video platform, she said in a blog post on Thursday.
YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, will be the new head of YouTube, she said.
Wojcicki, 54, said she will focus on “family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about.” Wojcicki, who was previously a senior vice president for ad products at Google, became CEO of YouTube in 2014.
She was among Google’s earliest employees and has been with the parent company Alphabet for nearly 25 years.
Before Google, Wojcicki worked at Intel and Bain & Company.
Mohan, a Stanford graduate, joined Google in 2008 and is the chief product officer at YouTube where he been focusing on building YouTube Shorts and Music. Mohan has also worked with Microsoft and sits on the board of Stitch Fix and genomics and biotechnology company 23andMe.
Alphabet shares were barely changed for the day, down less than 1 percent after the news.
In December last year, YouTube faced issues in India after the government asked the social media company to take down three channels for making false and sensational claims about various public welfare initiatives and spreading fake news. The three channels were declared as peddlers of fake news by the Press Information Bureau Fact Check Unit.
The Fact Check unit of the Press Information Bureau said these YouTube channels spread false and sensational claims about the Supreme Court of India, chief justice of India, government schemes, Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and farm loan waivers among others.
