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Business News Digital
Susan Wojcicki stands down as YouTube boss
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 17 February 2023
The boss of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, has announced she is standing down after nine years running the video site and nearly 25 years with the wider Google company, which she first joined in 1999.
In a blog post aimed at creators who post content to the YouTube platform, Wojcicki wrote yesterday: “It has been the honour of my career to have a front row seat to the incredible YouTube community you have built. Your stories of perseverance, creativity and inspiration were a daily source of motivation and inspired me to be an advocate and steward for this community you all created”.
Wojcicki’s time running YouTube was eventful but successful, the platform maintaining its massive userbase and cultural prominence despite some big new competitors and – perhaps more importantly – significantly growing its advertising revenues while also evolving some premium products. Although those booming ad sales have started to wobble of late as the economy at large has become more challenging.
From a music industry perspective, Wojcicki’s stint as CEO saw YouTube become enemy number one of the record companies and music publishers for a time, because of the platform’s use of the copyright safe harbour to force music rights owners into less favourable licensing deals.
That resulted in the big political campaign to reform the safe harbour in Europe, which basically became a YouTube v the music industry battle. Although, since then, the Google division’s relationship with the music community has improved considerably.
There were other even bigger political challenges regarding how YouTube polices offensive, unlawful, abusive and misleading content that is uploaded to its platform, with law-makers still evolving and considering new rules to govern the big digital platforms when it comes to harmful content of that kind.
And it’s not just the politicians that Wojcicki has had to contend with in that domain, with the platform’s advertisers also making demands regarding the filtering and blocking of harmful content, threatening to pull their ads if it didn’t happen.
Wojcicki has also had to keep happy the community of creators who upload and monetise videos on the YouTube platform, with the aforementioned big new competitors luring away some of those creators, while also impacting on the kinds of content that people consume and therefore the kind of content that creators want to make.
“It was a constant highlight of my job to sit down with you, hear how you were using the platform and listen to feedback”, Wojcicki’s post to the creators went on. “Sometimes what you said was tough and candid, but it was important for me and the wider YouTube team to listen and do better. Today, the YouTube community is incredibly strong. You’re building businesses and following your dreams”.
On more practical matters, she went on, “you will continue to have someone committed to building and advocating for creators at the helm of YouTube. YouTube’s longtime Chief Product Officer, Neal Mohan, will take over the leadership role. He is an excellent leader and understands this community and what you need today, tomorrow and in the future better than anyone”.
“I plan to stay around for a period of time to help Neal with the transition, and will serve as an advisor to Google and Alphabet”, she added. “I remain just as convinced today as when I started nine years ago, that YouTube’s best days are ahead of it. From Shorts, to podcasting, streaming to subscriptions, I am excited to see what comes next. And with Neal and our incredible team of employees, you will all be in good hands”.
