YouTube CEO Chad Hurley is surrendering the reins of the popular
video website that he started with two buddies as a quirky curiosity and
went on to groom into a media magnet that shows more than 2 billion
clips a day.
The
change in command announced Friday formalizes a transition that has
been unfolding over the past two years as YouTube's owner, Internet
search leader Google Inc., asserted more control over the website.
Google
dispatched one of its longtime employees, Salar Kamangar, to help
Hurley steer YouTube in 2008. That move signaled Google's resolve to
start making more money off its 2006 acquisition of YouTube for $1.76
billion. Kamangar's expertise is in online advertising.
Since
his arrival at YouTube's San Bruno headquarters, Kamangar had been
running the day-to-day operations while Hurley concentrated on keeping
the site's steadily growing audience happy. Kamangar now officially
assumes the CEO's role while Hurley, 33, remains available as a
part-time adviser.
The transition will give
Hurley, a designer, more time to devote to another of his business
ideas, the men's clothing line Hlaska. The brand's name is a mash-up of
Hawaii and Alaska, signifying its goal of becoming "the 51st state."
Although
YouTube has been selling more ads and striking more business
partnerships since Kamangar entered the picture, Google hasn't said
whether the site is profitable yet. The ads shown on YouTube are part of
the roughly $625 million in revenue that Google got from so-called
display advertising during the three months ending in September. That's
less than 10 percent of Google's total revenue of $7.3 billion during
the period.
Google confirmed Hurley is stepping down after he disclosed his diminished role Thursday night at an event in Ireland.
The
company also said it is losing the leader of a more recent acquisition,
mobile ad service AdMob. Omar Hamoui, AdMob's founder and CEO, quit for
personal reasons, according to Google. His exit comes just five months
after Google paid $681 million for AdMob as part of is effort to sell
more advertising on mobile phones.
YouTube's
two other co-founders, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, had already jumped
ship. Karim left just a few months after the trio decided to set up a
way to share their videos online. Chen, formerly YouTube's chief
technology officer, moved on in 2008.
YouTube's
sale to Google enriched all three of the founders, who had met while
working at the online payment service PayPal. Hurley raked in the
biggest cut: 735,000 shares Google stock. Based on Google's closing
price of $613.70, those shares would now be worth about $450 million.
Some
television and movie studios contended YouTube built its early success
by looking the other way as video pirates swamped the website with
copyrighted clips. Viacom Inc.
even went so far as to file a lawsuit that alleged Hurley, Chen and
Karim welcomed the pirated clips because they knew the material would
help widen YouTube's audience.
Although
the lawsuit uncovered some e-mail exchanges that seemed to support some
of Viacom's allegations, a federal judge ruled four months ago that
YouTube had complied with U.S. laws requiring websites to remove
copyright violations after they are reported. Viacom had been seeking
more than $1 billion in damages in the case.
YouTube
now has a more cordial relationship with Hollywood, partly because
Google helped develop technology that automatically flags copyrighted
videos that have been uploaded to the site without approval.