YouTube CEO Neal Mohan to Nikhil Kamat on 'Google's $100 million offer' question: By the way, don't…

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan has responded to a report claiming that Google paid him $100 million over a decade ago to prevent him from leaving the company during a 'talent war' in Silicon Valley. The topic came up during a recent episode of Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath’s podcast, where Mohan joined as a guest. Kamath referenced a widely-circulated story from 2011, saying, “I remember reading this thing about Google offering you $100 million not to quit. Not today, but 15 years ago, which was a lot of money.”Mohan, notably, did not deny the claim but laughingly said, "I wanna see where you're going to take this."The YouTube CEO also told the Zerodha co-founder that he should not believe all reports."And by the way, don't believe every single headline that you read, even if it was 15 years old," he added.At the time, Mohan was playing a key role in shaping Google’s advertising strategy and product roadmap for YouTube. According to a 2011 TechCrunch report, the tech giant made the offer in the form of restricted stock units vesting over several years, in a bid to stop him from leaving for Twitter, now known as X.Twitter was reportedly eyeing Mohan for the position of Chief Product Officer, encouraged by his former boss at DoubleClick, David Rosenblatt, who had joined Twitter's board. Mohan, a Stanford-educated electrical engineer, started his career at Andersen Consulting, before moving to NetGravity. After NetGravity was acquired by DoubleClick, he rose through the ranks to become VP of Business Operations. When Google acquired DoubleClick in 2007 for $3.1 billion, Mohan joined Google and eventually became one of the most influential figures in its ad business.The 2011 retention offer seems to have paid off. Mohan continued to climb the ranks and was appointed YouTube CEO in 2023, succeeding Susan Wojcicki.Interestingly, Mohan wasn't the only executive Twitter had tried to poach. The company had also reportedly approached Sundar Pichai, then head of Chrome and Chrome OS, around the same time. Google, in response, offered Pichai a $50 million stock grant to keep him onboard. Pichai later became CEO of Google in 2015 and CEO of Alphabet in 2019.