Tech

Google's 16th Employee Susan Wojcicki Is Now YouTube's New CEO

Read in app
Susan Wojcicki
Susan Wojcicki  Flickr via Fortune Live Media

Susan Wojcicki, a long-standing Googler and advertising executive, is now the CEO of YouTube, the company announced today.

Word of Wojcicki's appointment leaked Tuesday night on The Information and Recode. 

Wojcicki was Google employee number 16 and she follows Salar Kamangar, Google's ninth employee, as YouTube's CEO. It's unclear what Kamangar's new role at Google would be. The Information speculates he may move to Google's investment arm, Google Ventures.

Recode explains Wojcicki's potential new role as a solution to a "management problem" at Google. Wojcicki reportedly wants to run something and she has been eyed as a CEO candidate for other companies. Her current role was recently divvied up and partially given to Sridhar Ramaswamy, who may take over Wojcicki's current role entirely if she moves to YouTube.

Placing Wojcicki at the helm of YouTube may also be a sign that Google is interested in ramping up the video platform's advertising business. Wojcicki is currently Google's Senior Vice President of Products and Commerce.

Read next

Alyson is the Editor-in-Chief and CCO at Fortune.  She was previously a co Editor-in-Chief overseeing Business Insider's tech and business coverage.She joined Business Insider in July 2008 as the company's sixth employee. She started as a sales planner before joining the editorial team in 2010, where she became a startup reporter and was first to cover some of today's largest tech companies, including Pinterest, Tinder, Instagram, Uber and Snap. Alyson rose to become a senior correspondent, then Executive Editor.She was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider in 2016, at which point she became the youngest and only woman to run a global business publication. Under her leadership, the business division has grown to hundreds of  millions of monthly readers.Alyson was a host of  Insider's conferences and launched a podcast, "Success! How I Did It," where she interviewed influencers ranging from Sheryl Sandberg to Steve Ballmer about their career paths (subscribe on iTunes here).She has appeared on ABC, Good Morning America, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and CBC, and she has interviewed media personalities such as Megyn Kelly, technology leaders like Fred Wilson, political leaders like John Brennan, and sports star LeBron James. She is a judge for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Awards in business journalism, and has been named one of Min's Rising Stars in Media, as well as Folio's 2017 Top Women in Media.She graduated from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she majored in psychology and advertising.You can read some of her investigative articles here:— Leaked videos reveal the true founding story of Snapchat— The founder who dumped Jared Kushner: Inside the phone call that left the White House star in a fit of rage— The downfall of billion-dollar startup, Fab— How a startup that raised the largest seed round in Silicon Valley history blew itself up before it even launched— The dark side of Facebook, where people lie, cheat, and make millions— A profile of Uber's controversial CEO, Travis Kalanick— The mystery of Jody Sherman, a founder who was driven to suicide and left behind a shocking business disasterDisclosure: Alyson owns bitcoin and Snap. She is also an investor in The Spun, a sports-media startup founded by her husband.