Susan Wojcicki, a longtime Google govt who performed a key position within the firm’s creation, is stepped down as YouTube’s CEO after spending the previous 9 years operating the video web site that has reshaped leisure, tradition and politics.

In an e-mail to YouTube workers that was shared publicly Thursday, the 54-year-old Wojcicki stated she is stepping right down to “begin a brand new chapter centered on my household, well being, and private initiatives I’m keen about.” She did not elaborate on her plans.

Neil Mohan, who has labored intently with Wojcicki for years, will change her as YouTube’s CEO.

Though she grew to become some of the revered feminine executives within the male-dominated tech business, Wojcicki can even be remembered as Google’s first landlord.

Shortly after Google co-founders Larry Web page and Sergey Brin integrated their search engine right into a enterprise, Wojcicki rented the storage of her Menlo Park, California, house to them for $1,700 per thirty days.

Web page and Brin — each 25 on the time — continued to refine their search engine in Wojcicki’s storage for 5 months earlier than transferring Google right into a extra formal workplace and later persuaded their former landlord to come back work for his or her firm. “It might be among the best selections of my life,” Wojcicki wrote within the announcement of her departure.

In 2006, Google purchased Wojcicki’s house to function a monument to the roots of an organization now valued at $1.2 trillion. Throughout Wojcicki’s profession at Google, Brin grew to become her brother-in-law when he married her sister, Anne, in 2007. Brin and Anne Wojcicki divorced in 2015.

Wojcicki’s departure comes at a time when YouTube is going through one in every of its most difficult intervals since Google purchased what was then a unusual video web site going through widespread complaints about copyright infringement in 2006 for an introduced worth of $1.65 billion (The all-stock deal was valued at $1.76 billion by the point the transaction closed).

Though Google was initially derided for paying a lot for a video service whose future gave the impression to be doubtful, it turned out to be a discount. Apart from changing into a cultural phenomenon that draws billions of viewers, YouTube additionally has change into a monetary success with advert income totaling $29 billion final 12 months. That was up from annual advert income of $8 billion in 2017 when Google’s company guardian, Alphabet Inc., started to reveal YouTube’s monetary income.

However YouTube’s advert income in the course of the closing six months of final 12 months dropped 5% from the earlier 12 months — the primary prolonged downturn that the video service has proven since Alphabet peeled again its monetary curtain. Analysts are nervous the hunch will proceed this 12 months, one of many causes Alphabet’s inventory worth has fallen by about 10% because it launched its most up-to-date quarterly report two weeks in the past.

Wojcicki can also be leaving simply days earlier than the U.S. Supreme Court docket is scheduled to listen to oral arguments in a case threatening the freewheeling model that has lengthy been one in every of YouTube’s largest benefits.

The case stems from the 2015 demise of an American lady killed in Paris throughout an assault by Islamic State in an incident that spurred the sufferer’s household to file a lawsuit alleging YouTube’s algorithms aided the phobia group’s recruitment. If the courtroom decides that tech corporations may be held accountable for materials posted on their websites, specialists say the results couldn’t solely destroy YouTube however shake up your entire web.

That’s as a result of underneath the U.S. legislation, web corporations are usually exempt from legal responsibility for the fabric customers submit on their networks. Part 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act — itself a part of a broader telecom legislation — supplies a authorized “secure harbor” for web corporations — a safety that YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen seized upon as a possibility to launch as video web site to “broadcast your self.”