Susan Wojcicki, Google's Ad Boss, To Be Next CEO of YouTube

Susan Wojcicki was Google's 16th employee and now, according to reports from The Information and Re/Code, is the new CEO of YouTube. Wojcicki will be taking over the position from Salar Kamangar, who's expect to leave YouTube but remain working for Google. Wojcicki has been a part of Google for a long time and, notably, the company was headquartered out of her garage in Menlo Park, California, for a short time. Her previous position was the senior vice president of advertising at Google, which is a major position at the search-engine company, where much of its annual revenue comes from advertising on searches. However, there is some controversy surrounding Wojcicki's rumored promotion. Wojcicki was one of the most well-known executives at Google and a rumored target for a high level position at a venture capital fund or a CEO role, reports Re/Code. But Google and specifically Larry Page didn't want to lose Wojcicki to a competitor and gave her a CEO position with a Google subsidiary instead. But now, Google may have to worry about VP of product Shishir Mehrotra, who essentially ran YouTube while Kamangar started moving away from YouTube and started working closer to Page. Historically though, Google has done a great job at retaining talented employees and they've been able to do so by throwing huge amounts of money at them. One story that comes to mind is when Twitter tried to hire Neal Mohan from Google's ad department back in 2011 and Wojcicki, his boss at Google, convinced him to stay by making him a $100 million offer. Wojcicki's promotion to CEO could be a sign that Google's looking to turn YouTube into something a little more lucrative. The Internet's number 1 video site is important to Google and generated $5.6 billion in revenue last year. With Wojcicki successfully leading Google's ad business to the online behemoth that it is now, Google and CEO Larry Page is hoping that she'd be able to do the same with YouTube.