SAN FRANCISCO (AP) —
Chad Hurley, one of the founders of
YouTube, is stepping down as chief executive of the company, which runs the world’s most popular video Web site.
Mr. Hurley’s decision to give up the leadership role formalizes a transition that has been in the works for some time as
YouTube’s owner,
Google, asserted more control.
Salar Kamangar, one of
Google’s earliest employees, has been running the day-to-day operations at
YouTube for the last two years while
Mr. Hurley concentrated on the site’s design and relationship with its users.
Mr. Hurley, who is 33, intends to remain a
YouTube adviser and officially turn over the role of chief executive to Mr. Kamangar.
Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion four years ago, enriching Mr. Hurley and his co-founders, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. Mr. Chen and Mr. Karim had already left
YouTube.
Although
YouTube has been selling more ads and striking more business partnerships since Mr. Kamangar entered the picture,
Google has not said whether the site, which is five years old, is profitable yet. The ads shown on
YouTube are part of the roughly $625 million in revenue that Google earned 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.
The transition will give Mr. 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 blending of Hawaii and Alaska, signifying its goal of becoming “the 51st state.”
YouTube’s sale to Google enriched all three of the founders, who had met while working at PayPal. Mr. Hurley earned the biggest cut: 735,000 shares of
Google stock. Based on
Google’s Friday closing price of $613.70, those shares would now be worth about $450 million.