CEO of Youtube for years, the woman behind Google's advertising success: Who is Susan Wojcicki?

Susan Wojcicki is a Polish-American technology executive. Currently, she is the CEO of YouTube, the most popular video-sharing platform today. It would not be an exaggeration to say that thanks to her achievements, Google and YouTube have reached their present point.

YouTube; One of today's most famous platform for uploading, watching, and sharing videos with others. The company gives its users the opportunity to own a channel. It offers non-members the opportunity to watch these videos and follow the channels. 2014, it also paved the way for YouTube members to earn money. Thus, the platform created employment, and today, “YouTuber” has become a profession. With this application, each member started to earn money per view.

Susan Diane Wojcicki (born July 5, 1968) is a Polish-American business executive who is the CEO of YouTube. She has been in the tech industry for over 20 years. Wojcicki was involved in the founding of Google, and became Google's first marketing manager in 1999. She later led the company's online advertising business and was put in charge of Google's original video service. After observing the success of YouTube, Wojcicki proposed the acquisition of YouTube by Google in 2006, and has served as CEO of YouTube since 2014.

So, by whom and when was YouTube founded? Let's take a brief look at the creation process of YouTube. YouTube came into our lives in 2005. The company was founded in the USA as a result of the head-to-head of 3 former Paypal employees.

Among the names that brought YouTube to life are Chad Harley, Steve Chen, and Javed Karim. In February 2005, three friends bought the YouTube.com domain name. Three months later, they activated the beta version of YouTube. Then, in November, YouTube was officially launched.

The success of YouTube in a short time did not escape the attention of Google employees. The company decided to acquire YouTube in November 2006. Thus, YouTube joined Google for $1.65 billion.

It is known that YouTube has developed rapidly after being acquired by Google. As of July 2006, information was shared by the authorities that more than 65,000 new videos were uploaded to the site every day. Well, who came up with the idea of ​​incorporating YouTube, which continues its activities as one of Google's subsidiaries today, within Google?

Her first big success came in 2000, with the debut of AdWords, the clickable text-only advertisements that appear on Google search pages.

Here, the name that discovered YouTube's potential in its infancy was Susan Wojcicki, who is currently the CEO of the company.

Susan was born on July 5, 1968, in Santa Clara County, California, USA. Her father is Stanley Wojcicki, a professor of physics at Stanford University. Her mother is Esther Wojcicki, an educator. In a statement, Susan talks about the impact her parents' professions have on her:

"My father was a physics professor and my mother was a high school English teacher. I grew up on the Stanford campus. All of our neighbors were professors, so I didn't know anyone who worked for a large company. The Internet wasn't there yet—I didn't even start using a computer until college. So I've never been interested in working in business or technology. "I didn't have a goal. Instead, I saw academics asking big questions and working to solve important problems. Long before I knew exactly what I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to do something that would make the world a better place."

Susan has two sisters named Anne and Janet. At this point, the name Anne Wojcicki may sound familiar to you from somewhere. If she didn't, let's just point out that she is the ex-wife of Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google. She is also the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe, a personal genomics company.

Susan Wojcicki married Dennis Troper, one of the executives of Google, in 1998. Susan, who became pregnant with her first child shortly after marriage, is now a mother of five.

Wojcicki attended Gunn High School in Palo Alto. Young Susan was very interested in social sciences during this period. It is known that she wrote for some magazines and wrote for the school newspaper during her high school years.

After her graduation, Susan transferred to Harvard University in 1986. She did her undergraduate degree in literature and history. She graduated from college with honors in 1990. After graduation, she aimed to pursue an academic career.

So, how did this woman, who is interested in social sciences, suddenly turn her attention to technology? In an interview on this subject, she cites the Harvard years as the period she was interested in. Moreover, she states that this is based on a coincidence.

Wojcicki states that she works temporarily at a different agency each summer while she was studying at Harvard. She also states that she works with these agencies in different places and in different fields. For example, she talks about working at a law firm for a while, in the sanitation industry for a while, and at a tech startup in her senior year. This tech startup almost completely changes Wojcicki's life.

Wojcicki was amazed at the creativity of the coding she saw here. She later returned to school and took her first computer science class. She was the only senior in this course that was completely unrelated to the History and Literature department she was studying.

Immersed in the creative universe of technology and computers, Wojcicki realized that it could affect people's lives. She was particularly interested in art projects.

Career Life Before YouTube

Wojcicki began her career working as a management consultant at RB Webber & Company and Bain & Company. At the same time, she worked at Intel Inc's headquarters for a period in the marketing department.

When the calendar showed September 1998, Susan experienced a turning point in her life. Two young men who wanted to start a new search engine were looking for a place to work to bring their project to life. These two young men were Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google. The process of meeting Susan with them is quite interesting.

Wojcicki, who met these two while she was working at Intel, states that she was pregnant at that time. In addition, she states that she and her husband bought a new house in the same period. She also says that starting a new venture in such a period is not a logical move.

Wojcicki says that the house she bought with her husband is very close to the Stanford campus. The couple's paths cross with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are looking for someone to rent some of the houses to students to pay off the debt.

Although there was no transition beyond the tenant-landlord relationship between the two couples at first, Wojcicki states that over time she got to know both of them better and started using Google. After using it for a while, Wojcicki realizes that Google is a very successful search engine and continues her career at Google. In fact, she is Google's 16th employee!

She started her job at Google in 1999, first as a marketing manager. Thus, she goes on record as Google's first marketing manager. Susan also contributes greatly to the development of products such as Google Doodles. Due to her short-term success, she is moving to the position of Senior Vice President of Advertising and Trade.

In this process; She audits Google's analytics and advertising products, especially AdWords, Google Analytics and AdSense. Finally, Susan, who oversees the Google Video service, observes the success of YouTube. Realizing they can't compete with them, she proposes to the board to buy YouTube.

YouTube Adventure

On the rising star of YouTube, Wojcicki's proposal to the Google Board is approved. Google takes action and buys YouTube for $1.65 billion in November 2006. This acquisition is recorded as one of Google's largest acquisitions.

8 years after this acquisition, Susan Wojcicki became CEO of YouTube. Before becoming CEO, the rate of women working at YouTube was 24 percent. However, under her administration, this rate increased to 30 percent.

Susan took part in the launches of different YouTube apps targeting content users. Alongside this, she has taken over control of YouTube Red, a paid streaming subscription service from YouTube. YouTube Red's current name is known as YouTube Premium. In addition, the activity of YouTube TV took place under her supervision. Here's how Susan describes her YouTube adventure:

“I was working on Google Video in 2005 and saw that another video company called YouTube is seeing incredible growth thanks to user-generated content. People all over the world were uploading great videos to YouTube with the slogan 'Post Yourself' that would never have been in traditional media. I realized that there are completely new types of content and formats that never existed before and that YouTube is a huge opportunity for Google. I worked on Google's acquisition of YouTube in 2006. At the same time, I moved on to lead product management for Google's advertising products "And I continued to work in advertising for the next eight years. In 2014, Google contacted me to take on the CEO role at YouTube. I was as passionate about YouTube's mission as ever and was excited by the opportunity to take it into the future."

Post Susan Wojcicki YouTube

After becoming CEO, she set about regulating the policies regarding videos posted on YouTube. At this point, it is possible to say that the policies were made more strict under her supervision. One of the reasons Susan pursued harsh policies was a report in a British national newspaper. The news stated that YouTube could easily share videos of those who support terrorist groups. As such, Susan has taken important steps toward videos containing hate speech and violence.

The company announced that under Susan's supervision, YouTube gained 1.5 billion users in a month, with users viewing the site for one billion hours a day. On the other hand, Susan entered Time's 100 most influential people list in 2015 due to her achievements. Additionally, Time Magazine honored Susan as 'the most powerful woman on the internet in an issue.

Wojcicki seems very excited about the latest point YouTube has reached today. According to her statements, whenever she meets someone, she learns that they have a story about YouTube. This story is sometimes about a student getting help with her/his homework and sometimes about learning how to fix a garage door repair.