During the pandemic, YouTube became a global video library, and played a key role in enabling people to reach what they needed – YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said on Wednesday during the spring edition of Impact CEE.

When asked about the past year from YouTube's perspective, she said that as part of its activities, the platform wanted to help people connect with each other significantly limited by the coronavirus pandemic, as well as access various types of content and activities known from life before the pandemic.

"I believe YouTube played a key role in enabling people to reach what they needed," the head of Google's website said.

"These are daily masses, language channels, culture, such as a competition organized by the National Fryderyk Chopin Institute," Wojcicki added.

In her opinion, "many cultural institutions that were not able to work differently" also took advantage of the opportunities offered by the website.

"It was a very difficult year, but we learned how to live online," Susan Wojcicki assessed.

In her opinion, YouTube has become a global video library. Information, but also university lectures, recordings about hobby activities, such as learning to play instruments, were popular on the platform during the pandemic. In her opinion, Google "also made a lot of effort to ensure that teachers could conduct online classes with children," and YouTube was often used by them as a tool. According to Wojcicki, the platform "plays a key role in education".

"What we noticed in the pandemic was that people were looking for a great many different topics that were not previously popular – like home study, relaxation techniques, home exercises, materials for children," she concluded.

(PAP)