Tech stock leader Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary and streaming video titan YouTube is about to see one serious sea change. Longtime CEO Susan Wojcicki’s hotly controversial—at least among content creators who wonder where their cut of ad revenue is—reign is about to end. She’s leaving Google altogether, reports note, and “start a new chapter” in her life, one less focused on YouTube.
Neal Mohan will take over for Wojcicki. Mohan has been YouTube’s chief product officer since 2015. He’s been with Google itself since it bought DoubleClick back in 2007. She won’t step down altogether, however. She’ll remain in an “advisory role.” A downturn in the overall advertising market left ad revenue reeling at YouTube. Revenue was down 7.7% against the previous quarter in recent earnings reporting.
Summing up Wojcicki’s tenure could be done best with her own words from a 2019 interview: “We managed to upset everybody.” Wojcicki frantically tried to balance the demands of advertisers who paid for the site to operate against the needs of content creators who provided the material that kept users returning to make advertising worthwhile. Multiple content creators ended up departing the site for much smaller venues or shutting down altogether. YouTube even drew a $170 million fine back in 2019 after alleged violations of children’s privacy laws.
Wojcicki’s departure, meanwhile, has minimal impact on analyst perceptions, as consensus currently calls Alphabet a Strong Buy. Its stock’s average share price target of $124.60 gives it 30.16% upside potential.
