Susan Wojcicki, a pioneering tech government who helped form Google and YouTube, has died, her husband mentioned. She was 56.
Wojcicki performed a key function in Google’s creation and served 9 years as YouTube’s CEO, stepping down final yr to give attention to her “household, well being, and private initiatives I’m enthusiastic about,” she mentioned on the time.
She was some of the revered feminine executives within the male-dominated tech trade.
Her collaboration with Google co-founders Larry Web page and Sergey Brin started shortly after they integrated their search engine right into a enterprise in 1998. Wojcicki rented the storage of her Menlo Park, California, dwelling to them for $1,700 a month, cementing a formative partnership. Web page and Brin — each 25 on the time — continued to refine their search engine in Wojcicki’s storage for 5 months earlier than shifting Google right into a extra formal workplace and later persuaded their former landlord to return work for his or her firm.
Wojcicki joined Google, now referred to as Alphabet, as its advertising supervisor in 1999 and served in numerous positions as Google grew its internet marketing presence by buying YouTube in 2006 and DoubleClick in 2008. She served as Google’s senior vice chairman of promoting and commerce from 2011 to early 2014 and CEO of YouTube from 2014 to 2023.
“Her loss is devastating for all of us who know and love her, for the hundreds of Googlers she led through the years, and for thousands and thousands of individuals everywhere in the world who regarded as much as her, benefited from her advocacy and management, and felt the influence of the unimaginable issues she created at Google, YouTube, and past,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai mentioned in a be aware to staff.
Former Fb COO Sheryl Sandberg, who was vice chairman of Google’s gross sales and operations from 2001 to 2008 earlier than decamping to Fb, mentioned in a Fb put up that Wojcicki was formative in her tech profession.
“She taught me the enterprise and helped me navigate a rising, pretty chaotic group at first of my profession in tech,” Sandberg wrote. “She was the individual I turned to for recommendation again and again. And she or he was this individual for thus many others too.”
Her husband, Dennis Troper, introduced her loss of life in a social media put up late Friday.
“My beloved spouse of 26 years and mom to our 5 youngsters left us in the present day after 2 years of dwelling with non small cell lung most cancers,” he wrote.
“Susan was not simply my greatest buddy and companion in life, however a superb thoughts, a loving mom, and a pricey buddy to many,” Troper mentioned.
No different particulars of her loss of life had been instantly offered.
Wojcicki and Troper’s 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, died in February on the UC Berkeley campus the place he resided as a freshman scholar.