Meet man, an Indian, who was paid Rs 856 crore by Google to stop him from joining…., his name is…

Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO has redefined digital advertising.

Written by: Anirudha Yerunkar Edited by: Anirudha Yerunkar

Published: May 28, 2025, 3:00 PM IST

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https://www.india.com/business/meet-man-an-indian-who-was-paid-rs-856-crore-by-google-to-stop-him-from-joining-twitter-his-name-is-neal-mohan-ceo-youtube-7847404/ Copy

The Indian-American tech leader Neal Mohan does not always appear in the media. However he has played a big role in sucess of Google and YouTube. Neal Mohan recently participated in a podcast with Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha. He revealed unknown facts about YouTube in it. Kamath revealed that Google had once paid around $100 million to keep Mohan from leaving the company for Twitter (now known as X).

In 2011, there was a battle between Google and Twitter over content. In which Neal Mohan was stopped by Google by offering him $100 million in stock in the company.

Neal Mohan In Google

He has done engineering from Stanford in 1996. Neal started his professional journey at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). Then he moved to a startup named NetGravity, which was acquired by DoubleClick. This move changed the career of Neal.

At DoubleClick, Neal Mohan progressed faster, He was in services, sales operations and then became Vice President of Business Operations. His work was noticed by David Rosenblatt.

When DoubleClick was going through challenges, Neal Mohan and David Rosenblatt joined hands together. After which it got Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007, according to Business Insider.

By 2011, Neal Mohan played a major role in Google’s advertising platforms and was also helping YouTube’s in product strategy as Chief Product Officer. He was highly respected in Silicon Valley. At the same time Twitter was going through transition. David Rosenblatt, who was a board member at Twitter, wanted to bring Mohan on board as Twitter’s Chief Product Officer.

Google didn’t want to lose Neal Mohan to counter Twitter’s offer Google gave Neal a $100 million stock unit, according to TechCrunch. After which Mohan stayed with Google and became CEO of YouTube and continued to play a major role in shaping the company’s future.